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THROUGH RUSSIA 



ON A 



MUSTANG 



BY 



THOMAS STEVENS 

AUTHOR OF "around THE WORLD ON A BICYCLE," "SCOUTING FOR 
STANLEY IN EAST AFRICA," ETC. 



JVt'f/i Illustrations from Photographs by the Author 






,p,«V OF CO/V; 



\hKi 20 1091 ' ) ^ 



'.'-irjG ('-''' 



NEW YORK 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 «& 106 FOURTH AVENUE 



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Copyright, 1891, by 
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 



A 11 rights reserved. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J, 



The story of a ride from Moscow to the Black Sea, made 
by the author last summer (1890) for the New York World, 
to report on the condition, manners, customs, etc., of the 
people of European Russia. The ride (about iioo English 
miles through the heart of Russia) was made on a " Wild 
America " mustang, bought from the Carver-Whitney show 
(like Buffalo Bill's), that happened to be exhibiting in 
Moscow at the time. 

T. STEVENS. 



PREFACE. 



IN the following pages the author has endeavored 
to give an unbiased picture of the Russians and their 
country^ as seen by him from the saddle, on a horse- 
back ride of more than one thousand miles through 
the heart of the country, from Moscow to Sevastopol; 
thence up the Don and the Volga to Nijni Novgorod. 

When in Moscow, preparing for the horseback 
journey, I was fortunate enough to enlist the enthu- 
siasm of Sascha Kritsch, a young Russian who had 
just completed his studies, and was eager to distin- 
guish himself by a noteworthy achievement in the 
saddle before joining the cavalry. He could speak 
English, and both as an interpreter and a companion 
I found him of much value. He accompanied me as 
far as Ekaterinoslav, about two thirds of the distance 
to the Black Sea, when the heat and fatigue of the 
southern steppes, together with the suspicions and 
vexatious interference of the police, caused him to dis- 
pose of his horse and return to Moscow by rail. 

I may say that, in so far as I permitted myself the 
indulgence of preconceived ideas, my wish was to 
exploit the better, rather than the more objectionable, 
features of the government, and the economic and 
political conditions of the country. Before the ride 

vii 



VI 11 PREFACE. 

was half finished, however, I found myself compelled 
to admit that matters were very bad, indeed. 

The harshest feature of the many harsh sides of life 
in Russia, to an American, is the utter absence of con- 
stitutional rights. 

Individuals have no rights in Russia. They exist in 
peace and breathe the air outside a prison cell solely 
on the sufferance of the police, whose authority over 
them is practically that of deputy despots in their 
capacity as representatives of the Czar. 

When I first reached St. Petersburg, I wrote home of 
the agreeable impression that was made on me by see- 
ing the Czar driving freely about the streets, with 
scarcely any escort. Before leaving Russia, however, 
I discovered that, in order to make this sort of thing- 
possible, the Czar's Chief of Police summarily expels 
from the capital no less than fifteen thousand persons 
every year, or an average of over forty a day. Tourists 
and casual visitors from America and Europe see the 
Czar driving about in this manner, but they know 
nothing of the other side of the picture — of the steady 
streams of " suspects " and others driven from the city, 
three fourths of Avhom are probably innocent of evil 
intent, and so they come away with rosy and erroneous 
impressions, thinking they have seen Russia. 

Those who have seen merely St. Petersburg and 
Moscow, have seen little or nothing of real Russia, nor 
even if they have made the grand tour across the 
country by rail, and up or down the Volga. These 
tourists have glided over the surface of Russia, their 
path made smooth and agreeable by the imported 
polish of the West ; but they have not been in it. 



PRE FA CE. IX 

Russia has within its vast area resources that should 
make its future as promising as the future of the 
United States. The development of the country 
from this time forward offers a field of profound 
speculation for prophetic statesmen and political seers. 
That a nation of 120,000,000 people, chiefly Caucasians, 
are to be kept in bondage forever is out of the question. 
Hopeless as the outlook seems at present for the 
masses of the Russian people, all history teaches that 
the day of their emancipation will, sooner or later, 
come. The best solution of the situation that could 
be hoped for, would, perhaps, be a progressive and 
liberal Czar, who would have sufficient courage and 
energy to give the country a constitutional govern- 
ment, a free press, and religious liberty. If this be too 
long delayed, and the autocracy should survive the 
fall of European militarism, which is inevitable, civili- 
zation will develop an "age of humanitarianism " 
when the American, the Englishman, the Frenchman, 
and the Teuton, will recognize the Russian as a 
brother, and see to it that he is relieved of his shackles. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. St. Petersburg, i 

II. TCHUDOVO AND THE PrISTAV, . . . . 23 

III. Planning the Ride, • • 37 

IV. The Start from Moscow, . . , . . 56 
V. On the Czar's Highway, 71 

VI. With Count TolstoI, , 92 

VII. Among the Moujiks, 116 

VIII. Scenes on the Road, , 126 

IX. Into Malo Russia, . . . . . . • 144 

X. Suspicious Peasants, 153 

XI. Nuns and Convents, 170 

XII. Stopped by the Police, . . . , . 182 

XIII. A Searching Cross-examination, .... 199 

XIV. My Interpreter Returns, 216 

XV. On the Crimean Steppes, ..... 237 

XVI. Up the Don and Volga, ..... 251 

XVII. At Nijni Novgorod. ..,.,,, 270 

XVIII. " Holy Russia," ....... 281 

XIX. Orthodox Church and Priests, . . . = 297 

XX. Russian Women, . . . , , . . 313 

r . XXI. A National Characteristic, ..... 324 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



FACING PAGE 



THOMAS STEVENS, - - - - 

ROADSIDE VODKA-SHOP, - 

POST STATION ON STEPPE, - 

RESTING AT WAYSIDE INN, 

HARVEST TIME, ----- 

FEMALE PILGRIMS, - - - - 

GIRL HOSTLER, ----- 

STEPPE CATTLE-WELL, - . - 

COSSACK CEMETERY, - = - - 

STEPPE FLOUR MILL, 

CRIMEAN SHEPHERDS, " - - - 

TARTARS OF THE CRIMEA, 

ORTHODOX VILLAGE PRIEST, - - - 

WATER-MELON VENDERS, - - - 

TARTAR FURRIERS AT NIJNI NOVGOROD, 

MOUJIKS AT THE NIJNI FAIR, - 



Title 

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70' 

84 

104' 

120'^ 

140"^ 

160 

180^ 

200 

220 

240*^ 

260 ■ 

280 

300 



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xni 



THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



CHAPTER I. 

ST. PETERSBURG. 

FOR the second time I was bound for the Land of 
the Czar. But this time I was to enter it by a 
different door, in a different manner, and for a differ- 
ent purpose. My previous entrance had been inci- 
dental ; this was to be special. In 1886, when on my 
bicycle ride across Asia, Russian suspicion had barred 
my road through Turkestan, and the Afghans had ar- 
rested me and turned me back into Persia, after I had 
pierced into their forbidden country to within three 
hundred miles of Quetta. So, in June of that year, 
when, in order to overcome this hundred-league bar- 
rier it became necessary to reach the free roads of 
India by a roundabout journey of six thousand miles, 
I saw something of Russia in the Caucasus and on the 
shores of the Caspian Sea. 

My impressions were not favorable to the Russian 
rule. At the wharves of Baku, I, for the first time in 
my life, had seen smart, uniformed policemen strike 
people smashing blows in the face with clenched fist, 
and kick them most brutally in the stomach, for what 
in England or America would have called forth a mere 
gruff order to '* move on," or at most a threatening 
push. From page 257, vol. 2, ** Around the World on 



2 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

a Bicycle," I quote, writing of my impressions of 
Baku: 

'* Everywhere, everywhere, hovers the shadow of the 
police. One seems to breathe dark suspicion and mis- 
trust in the very air. The people in the civil walks of 
life all look like whipped curs. They wear the expres- 
sion of people brooding over some deep sorrow. The 
crape of dead liberty seems to hang on every door-knob. 
Nobody seems capable of smiling; one would think 
the shadow of some great calamity is hanging gloomily 
over the city. Nihilism and discontent run riot in the 
cities of the Caucasus ; government spies and secret 
police are everywhere, and the people on the streets 
betray their knowledge of the fact by talking little, and 
always in guarded tones." 

Such was the impression made on the author by his 
first visit to Russian soil. Was this impression in any 
degree the result of disgust at having been humbugged 
by the Russian Minister, at Teheran, about permission 
to ride through Merve, Samarkand, and Tashkend ? 
That gentleman had promised me, with Oriental polite- 
ness of tongue, that '' all obstacles should be removed 
from my road through Turkestan." With the inno- 
cence of one whose experience of Russian ofificialdom 
was yet of the future, I had believed that the tongue 
of a Russian diplomat, like the tongue of any other 
person, was given him to express his thoughts and in- 
tentions, and not to conceal them ; and so, on the 
strength of the promise, I rode three hundred miles 
across the Persian deserts, there to find that orders 
had been telegraphed to stop me at the frontier. 

Commenting on this, a reviewer of my book in the 



ST. PETERSBURG. 3 

New York Times, himself a distinguished traveler, 
observed : '"' Possibly this reverse may have been still 
fuddling the clear spirit of our author when he reached 

Baku Mr. Stevens was probably of the same 

way of thinking (just then) as that energetic traveler 
who wished that the last Russian would murder the 
last Turk, and be hanged for doing it." 

Nearly four years, mainly devoted to travel and ad- 
venturous undertakings, had mellowed this gloomy 
reminiscence of the Russians, and had broadened my 
experience of mankind in general. Perhaps, after all, 
there might have been something in the book reviewer's 
suggestions, that I was not then in a sufficiently amia- 
ble frame of mind to do Muscovy justice. 

However this may have been, such was not the case 
as the author stepped aboard an Atlantic liner. May 
I, 1890, bound for Russia, on a special mission for the 
New York World. 

For many years the people of America had taken a 
friendly interest in Russia. We had been, in trying 
times, the recipient of courtesies from its government, 
and our sympathies had gone out to it as a great 
nation of people groaning under the oppressive rule 
of an autocracy, which is the extreme antithesis of our 
own institutions. Our position in regard to its gov- 
ernment had been peculiar. From our own point of 
view the Czar's government cannot appear otherwise 
than as a monstrous enemy to the very principles that 
are the life-blood of all that we hold dear and precious 
in the name of liberty, fraternity, and justice ; yet we 
have accepted courtesies at its hands as from the hands 
of a bosom friend. Now and then our sentiments in 



4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

regard to it have been rudely shocked by revelations 
of a more or less revolting nature as to its methods of 
dealing with the people in its power. Our interest in 
it became painfully intensified as the Siberian revela- 
tions of Mr. Kennan were unfolded in the Century 
Magazine. 

So revolting was this picture of barbarity and admin- 
istrative corruption that many of our people, whose 
kindly remembrance of Russian courtesies influenced 
their prejudices and biased their better feelings in its 
favor, could not but receive them with a spirit of won- 
dering skepticism. 

The Russians were keenly sensitive to the criticisms 
of the people of America concerning them, more so 
than to the opinions of any other nation. A rebuke 
from us seemed to them like a rebuke from a friend. 
They are thicker-skinned in regard to England. Abuse 
and bias from the press and people of England, many 
Russians have come to regard as a foregone conclu- 
sion. They think the great dailies of England will 
publish eagerly anything and everything of a disrepu- 
table and abusive nature about Russia, and refuse, 
like the Jews in regard to Nazareth, to believe that 
anything gQod can come out of it. This is the inev- 
itable consequence of the political tension between 
the two empires. But they expected from us, at least, 
an impartial judgment equally as to their good quali- 
ties and their imperfections. It was because they re- 
garded America as a country with which they have 
ever been on the friendliest terms, that made the Rus- 
sians feel apprehensive lest the Kennan articles should 
cause them to be wholly misunderstood, and blind us 



ST. PETERSBURG. 5 

to the better side of their nature. One cannot, of 
course, say anything in this connection of the 119,- 
900,000, out of Russia's 120,000,000, who never heard 
of the Century nor Mr. Kennan, and who have as vague 
ideas of the world beyond the limited horizon of their 
village communes (mirs) as the Persian ryot in Khor- 
assan, who once asked me if America was in London. 

There was little to be learned of the true Russia in 
St. Petersburg. In Russia the investigator very soon 
discovers that he is sojourning in what may fairly be 
termed a dual country. There is the Russia of St. 
Petersburg, Moscow, the Czar, the army, politics, 
exiles, Siberia, — of which we read and hear from day 
to day, — and there is the Russia of the peasants, the 
villages, the country-side, " domestic Russia," of 
which we hear, and many of us know, next to nothing. 
By writing too confidently at the beginning, one may 
easily lay himself open to the sort of criticism bestowed 
on the English tourist, who rides in a parlor-car from 
New York to San Francisco and then goes home and 
writes a book about America. 

Though St. Petersburg is deceptive as a glimpse of 
Russia, it is an Imperial city, magnificent as to 
churches and public edifices, statuary and monuments, 
and interesting in the life that ebbs and flows in its 
streets. St. Petersburg is the rouge and enamel that 
the sallow, ill-looking tragedienne of the mediaeval 
part that Russia is playing in the drama of nations, 
wears, beautifying herself, and coquetting successfully 
with many who see her and fancy she is Russia. St. 
Petersburg itself is charming. 

I sat for an hour one day in the window of a caf6 



6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

on the famous Nevski Prospekt. It was four o'clock 
in the afternoon, and a fine, sunny day. All the 
Russian world and his wife seemed to be driving, 
walking, hurrying, idling past the window on this 
Broadway of the Russian capital. 

The most numerous passers-by, and to the new- 
comer the most Russian and interesting, were the 
drosky-drivers, the isvoshchics and their " fares." Like 
Washington, St. Petersburg is a city of magnificent 
distances. Everybody rides ; fares are cheap ; and 
there are twenty-five thousand public drosky-drivers in 
the city plying for hire. 

The isvoshchic and his costume are peculiarly 
Russian. The latter has not changed for ages, and 
apart from youth and age, whiskers and no whiskers, 
there is not the splitting of a hair between any of the 
five-and-twenty thousand public " kebbies " in the 
Czar's capital. There are isvoshchics at fourteen, 
young in face but old in iniquity, and isvoshchics of 
seventy-five, bearded like pards and supremely artful, 
in bargaining with the foreigner about the price of a 
drive. 

The summer costume of the isvoshchic is an ideal 
garb for winter from the point of view of anybody but 
a Russian. He is enveloped in an enormous overcoat 
of heavy dark-blue cloth that descends to his heels and 
is gathered about his waist by a gay-colored band. 
Top boots, heavy and prodigal of leather, incase his 
feet and legs ; and even on this warm June day a dis- 
arrangement of the big blue over-garment revealed a 
sheepskin coat, of similar dimensions, underneath. 

But the crowning glory of the drosky-driver is his 



ST. PETERSBURG, 7 

hat. Imagine a " stove-pipe " hat, six inches tall, with 
a very rakish brim and a very expansive crown, some- 
thing like the hats of the ancient and honorable 
beef-eaters at the Tower of London, and you see 
any one of the 30,000 coachmen's hats of St. Peters- 
burg. I say 30,000, because there are, beside the 
public isvoshchics, about five thousand private coachies, 
similarly dressed. 

The only difference between the public and private 
isvoshchics is that the latter look about three times 
larger than the former. All the private isvoshchics 
are men of Falstafifian girth. Some are of a truly 
startling circumference ; their stomachs bulging out 
like barrels, and the breadth of their figure more than 
fills the seat of the drosky. The thinness of the face 
often contrasts ludicrously with the vast proportions 
of the body, for the amplitude of the latter is not flesh 
but padding. The impression that the private coach- 
man desires to make upon the world at large is that he 
is the '* well-fed servant of a generous man." To this 
end, huge pads, like pillows, are fastened about the 
body, and over them is wrapped the all-concealing 
overcoat. To complete the deception, the colored 
waistband pinches into the padding, as if the chief 
concern of the owner of this vast wealth of fat were 
to reduce his girth, if such an impossible thing were 
possible. 

Whilst every private isvoshchic in Russia is thus a 
living lie in his figure, every public one is likewise a 
perambulating Ananias in a way that more directly 
concerns the pockets of the public. Every drive you 
take in St. Petersburg has to be bargained for in ad- 



8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

vance. The rates are cheaper than in any other 
European capital, being only fifty kopecks, or about 
thirty cents an hour. The St. Petersburg isvoshchic 
is known as the most reasonable of the fraternity in 
Russia; he rarely demands more than three times his 
proper fare, and as a general thing not even twice as 
much as he is willing to accept. 

He is good-natured and remarkably patient about 
finding an address. He is polite — of the Orient, Ori- 
ental. He rarely gives you a decided negative if he 
doesn't wish to drive where you desire to go, but takes 
refuge in his horse, telling you that it is weary, lazy, or 
ailing, and does not want to work. 

The isvoshchic is superstitious and fearful. Every 
little way, as he drives you along, he passes an ikon or 
shrine, at each of which he removes his abbreviated 
cylinder and crosses himself at the forehead, mouth 
and breast. His fear is centered on the Chief of Police 
of St. Petersburg. The isvoshchic is rarely obstreper- 
ous, but if he is, ''I'll tell Gresser " (or whoever hap- 
pens to be chief), brings matters to a speedy conclusion 
by immediately reducing him to a humble and appre- 
hensive frame of mind. 

His horse is small and his vehicle little larger than 
the old-fashioned invalid chairs one sometimes meets, 
with gouty old gentlemen in them, in the parks at 
home. 

A peculiarity of the " fares," if a lady and gentle- 
man, is that the latter usually has his arm about his 
companion's waist. -The Russian explanation is that 
without this precaution the lady might tumble out. 
The levity and penetration of the American mind, 



S7\ PETERSBURG. 9 

however, refuses to accept this practical view of the 
matter in all cases. And there certainly passed by the 
cafe window many a couple who, oblivious of the public 
eye, betrayed a decidedly sentimental interpretation of 
the relations between waist and arm. So prevalent is 
this custom that an exception excites attention. 

About five per cent, of the ladies, old or young, who 
passed by the cafe window were victims of the tooth- 
ache and had a swollen and bandaged jaw. Tooth- 
ache is the commonest malady of the St. Petersburg 
fair sex. The St. Petersburg girl of the period stays 
up late, lies abed till noon, takes no exercise, and lives 
on sweets and pickles. Her punishment is the tooth- 
ache, dentist's bills, a toothless old age, and a very bad 
complexion. Good teeth are rare with city ladies, and 
a fresh complexion is seldom seen on the streets. 

Half the men who passed were in uniform and, warm 
as it was, like the isvoshchics, wore big overcoats. 
The wearing of overcoats in summer is a Russian 
peculiarity. One of our popular impressions of the 
Russian is that he can stand more cold than a polar 
bear. Such, however, is not the case, at all events with 
the city Russian. An American or European who 
visits St. Petersburg or Moscow in the winter can stand 
the cold better than a resident. He can stand it out- 
doors with thinner clothes on, and is altogether less 
sensitive to the nose-nipping Russian frost. The Rus- 
sian becomes a polar bear in winter, not because he 
can stand the cold, but because he cannot. 

All the people in military uniforms who passed b}^, 
however, were not soldiers. You see little shavers of 
ten or twelve years old trudging along in military over- 



I o THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

coat and trappings. These are young students, who are 
required to wear uniforms, conspicuous colors and 
trimmings for the different schools for purposes of iden- 
tification. The newsboys also wear uniforms. 

A troop of Cossacks passed by, all big, fine fellows, 
belonging to one of the crack regiments, all riding 
splendid black stallions, sixteen hands high, spirited and 
glossy. 

A private carriage, an English-built brougham, with 
a magnificent team, and gold-laced lackeys on the box, 
dashed by. It belonged to one of the legations, and 
lolling in the seat, in a studiedly negligent attitude, 
was Madame, the Ambassador's wife, alone in her 
glory, en route to the Islands — Vasili Ostrof — for her 
regular evening drive. 

A string of twelve droskies filed past, each one con- 
taining a big Russian greyhound and a keeper in a red 
shirt. They belonged to some sporting nobleman, and 
were bound for the railway station to be taken some- 
where out in the country to an estate for a day's 
coursing for hares. 

A man in a suit of white coarse canvas, and with a 
brand on the back, tramped along between two police- 
men with drawn swords. He was a prisoner. His 
face was pale, showing that he had been in confine- 
ment some time. Otherwise, he looked no different 
from his keepers, with whom he chatted freely as they 
walked past. 

An aged couple tried to halt a tram, which, like the 
street car of London, carried passengers both inside 
and on the roof. The conductor shook them a nega- 
tive. His car was carrying the number permitted by 



ST. PETERSBURG. ii 

law, and no such confusion and overcrowding are 
allowed as in New York. Another one came along. 
The old couple tried it again and were again refused. 
Finally they hailed a passing isvoshchic, and, bargain- 
ing with him awhile, drove off. 

An economical party of four from the country drove 
past, all piled in one small drosky, two women sitting 
in two men's laps. Workmen strolled along, nine out 
often in top boots and red shirts. The red shirts were 
outside the trousers. A waistcoat was worn, but no 
coat, and the trousers were slouchily tucked inside the 
boots. Mingled with the throng were moujiks from 
the country, visiting '' Pater-boorg," perhaps, for the 
first time in their lives. They wore dirty sheepskin 
coats, shockingly bad caps, home-made foot-gear of the 
rudest pattern and material, and tiieir shock heads 
seemed to have been trimmed for the visit to the city 
by placing a bowl on the top, upside down, and clip- 
ping around it. They looked like savages — as incon- 
gruous and out of place on the Nevski as Indians 
would on Fifth Avenue, New York. 

Nurse-maids from Finland, or from Little Russia, 
rode by in the family carriage with their charges. 
Tliey wore a wonderful dress of gorgeous colors and 
gold embroidery, and a sort of beaded brass, silver or 
gold crown on the head. 

Young lady students passed in little troops or alone, 
carrying portfolios bearing the word " Musique." 
Music was the fad of the day in St. Petersburg. All 
the young ladies were raving over " musique." Next 
season the craze would be — who can say ? I was told 
that one of the latest fads with them was the study of 



12 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

midwifery. Everything in the student life, especially 
the girl student life, is faddy and eccentric. It is the 
spasmodic attempt of the intellectual Russian youth 
to find some employment, some scope for their energy 
and ambition, in a field where there is next to no 
intellectual employment at all. 

A small crowd was gathering on the street corner, as 
I left my window in the cafe. The Czar was coming 
in from Peterhoff and would drive this way. I did not 
wait, for I had seen him and the Empress before. The 
Emperor and Empress were almost as much in evi- 
dence as the President in Washington. When the 
Czar and the Italian heir-apparent, who was visiting St. 
Petersburg, drove down the Nevski, it was down a lane 
through the assembled and applauding populace, on 
which scarcely a soldier or a policeman was to be seen. 
The people were under less restraint than a New York 
crowd is at any popular gathering. 

All this impressed me, a new arrival, with a sense of 
agreeable surprise.* 

Yes ; St. Petersburg, consummate actress and gay 
deceiver that she is, was bewitching, disporting herself, 
arrayed in the focused glories of an empire, to the ad- 
miration of an audience of pleasure-seeking tourists 
from everywhere. The pageantry of the Czar's 
capital was ever on the move across the stage. To- 
day the christening and launching of an ironclad ; to- 
morrow a priestly procession along the Nevski, a 
glittering cavalcade of monks in golden vestments, in 
honor of the Emperor's name-day ; the next day, a 
military review. 

One day I resolved to leave this pomp and Imperial 



ST. PETERSBURG. 13 

greatness, and experience the contrast of a sudden 
change from the Elysian glories of Peterhoff to the 
huts of a typical village seventy miles away. Peter- 
hoff is an Imperial summer residence on the gulf of 
Finland ; grounds peopled with gilded statuary, amid 
a magnificent system of fountains. 

Mr. Steveni of the London Daily Chronicle^ a resi- 
dent correspondent, went with me to Tchudovo. 

Tchudovo is about one hundred versts (seventy 
miles) from St. Petersburg, in the direction of Moscow, 
a village in the district government of Novgorod. A 
Russian village is in appearance the counterpart of 
many small towns in the Western States. The first 
impression of the writer, who knows the West very 
well, was that he had stumbled into one of those 
slowly decaying backwood villages in Missouri or 
Illinois that have fallen out of joint and behind the 
times because the railway didn't come through their 
section of the country. Tchudovo is situated in a 
country as level and dreary as the dreariest part of any 
of the prairie States. The land belonging to the 
village was a big clearing in a level forest country that 
presented to the eye no single point of interest be- 
yond the people and their mode of life. The village 
was like all Russian villages, except that many of the 
houses were two-storied. It consisted of two rows of 
houses, between which ran Peter the Great's broad 
military road to Novgorod. A few of the houses were 
of brick, but most were of wood. Here as everywhere, 
though the uniformity of architecture was striking, 
evidences of wealth and poverty came within the orbit 
of a glance. Some of the houses were fairly toppling 



14 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

about their occupant's heads, and in no country of the 
world (and I had been in twenty-four), had I seen peo- 
ple so wretchedly lodged as part of the population of 
Tchudovo. Many, however, were good, comfortable 
board or log houses, comparable to the houses of 
eighty-acre farmers in the West. Half the houses 
might, perhaps, come under this description ; one 
fourth of them would be considered by us as wholly 
unfit for human habitation, and the remainder were 
superior dwellings, from the American farmer's stand- 
point, including one which might fairly be termed a 
mansion. 

There was a bakery, in front of which, on a rude 
bench, a row of huge rye loaves were exposed for sale. 
There were three or four general stores, the counter- 
parts of the American corner grocery, and as many 
vodka and mead and kwass shops. There was the inev- 
itable village smithy and a school ; towering over all 
was a large white church, surmounted by four blue 
domes and a blue spire. Both church and mansion 
were of Graeco-Corinthian architecture, a fact that led 
one to suspect that the founder of the church and the 
former occupant of the mansion, before the emancipa- 
tion of the serfs in 1861, was the nobleman who owned 
the land and peasantry of the district. 

We made our way to the blacksmith shop, here, as in 
the West, often the gossiping place of the village, and 
entered into conversation with the blacksmith, a man 
of fifty, his son and assistant, a young man of twenty- 
five, and a ragged moujik, all of whom took off their hats 
as we entered and sat down. As many of my readers 
already know, the Russian villages are communes of 



ST. PETERSBURG, 15 

peasants who own their land in common. Except for 
the disturbing influences of insolvent peasants who 
have recklessly got over their heads in debt, or from 
other causes, have become landless, the Russian village 
commune or mir is a collection of families and kins- 
folk who own the right of tillage each to a certain 
portion of their common land. This is the ideal mir. 
But with the mir as with everything else, in Russia as 
elsewhere, the real and the ideal seldom agree. 

The mir of Tchudovo, the blacksmith said, contained 
2000 people, of which something over 500 were '' souls," 
that is to say, sharers in the land. The rest were 
the children, small shopkeepers and vodka-sellers, the 
"pope" or priest, the grain merchant who lived in the 
mansion of the former nobleman, and landless '' bat- 
raks," who worked for wages at anything they could 
find to do. The blacksmith's son was the most intel- 
ligent of the three. We asked him about the mir and 
the various things that make up the sum and sub- 
stance of the Russian peasant's life. The people of 
Tchudovo, he said, had been wiser than many of their 
neighbors. The mirs had a right to borrow money 
from the banks or from private capitalists, giving the 
land as security. Many had done this, and by pledging 
themselves to ruinous terms were in sorry straits, 
having hard work to keep their heads above water and 
pay their taxes. 

"We have had better sense, though," said he, smil- 
ing with the peculiar grin of a simple rustic soul who 
is not to be easily taken in, " and have never borrowed 
money, and so our mir is very well off." 

" If your mir is well off, why, then, are there so many 



1 6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

batraks (men without land who work for wages) 
here ? " 

" Men and mirs are very much alike," he returned ; 
**some are wise and some foolish. Most men become 
batraks because they have foolishly borrowed money, 
and, being unable to repay, their horses and cows have 
been sold, and they have lost their power to cultivate 
any of the mir's land. Every member of the mir has 
the right to work a share of the land for the support of 
his family and the payment of his taxes, a large or 
small portion according to the number of persons 
capable of field-work and tax-payment in the family ; 
but with the loss of his horses and the means of work- 
ing land he is no longer a moujik, but a batrak, a man 
who would starve but for charity or work given him by 
others." 

" What is the hardest thing about the way you are 
governed ?" 

** The taxes," sang out our hearers in one voice, and 
the countenances of all lit up, and tongues wagged vol- 
ubly in eager rivalry to tell their tale of woe. 

'' So the government taxes you pretty heavily, does 
it?" 

" No, no; the government gets but very little of it. 
If the government knew all that happens to the moujik, 
it would pity him. The government taxes the mir and 
the mir taxes the individual. The elders collect the 
taxes and go off to Novgorod and drink vodka and eat 
caviar with the Novgorod officials, then come back 
and demand more taxes. It would be much better for 
us all if the Czar could sweep away everybody that 
stands between the Imperial Government and the 



ST. PETERSBURG. 1 7 

people, and have no elders, no officers of any kind. 
The more officials who have the handling of our taxes 
and the management of our affairs, the worse for us." 

" But the mir has the election of its own officers. If 
the present starosta (mayor) and the elders are dis- 
honest and grasping, why don't you elect honest men, 
Hke the blacksmith there, in their places? " 

" The blacksmith doesn't know how to read and 
write," they laughed ; " how could he be starosta ? 
We have tried to remedy matters, but the educated 
people are too sharp for us ; they always manage to 
keep in office whomever they choose, and the wisest 
moujik keeps his mouth shut closest. The elders 
assess each one of us the amount of taxes he has to 
pay, the amount of work to be done on the roads with- 
out pay, and have the regulation of everything in the 
mir. If I am their friend, they take care that my 
share of the taxes shall be light and my work on the 
roads easy, and when the Czar demands soldiers they 
will pass by my son and pick out the son of a moujik 
who has made himself objectionable to them by 
grumbling at them and voting against them at the 
elections. There are moujiks in the mir who pay next 
to no taxes at all, and moujiks who have to work away 
from home like batraks, besides tilling their land, to get 
money enough to pay their taxes. It is the same in 
nearly every mir. If every man had a good heart the 
mirs would be happy and prosperous, the moujiks well 
fed and clad, and our taxes would be light and easily 
paid. But every mir is a house of intrigue, in which 
the moujik is, in one way or another, cheated out of 
most of his earnings." 



i8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

'' Then you liave nothing to complain of about the 
St. Petersburg government ? " 

The group in the smithy had increased by this time 
to a half-dozen. The eagerness and intelligence which 
they all displayed in discussing their own affairs, in 
striking contrast to their ignorance of the outer world, 
was something remarkable. It was easy to imagine 
that if these peasants were only decently educated 
they would be a different people. They are born 
village politicians. Their faces were animated and 
bright, and from their eyes shone a light which was 
the lamp of an uncultured intelligence, which enabled 
them to understand, if not to remedy, their grievances. 
They were extremely good-natured about it all, how- 
ever. A reform that they were looking forward to, 
and expecting great things of, was a distinct reaction- 
ary move in the direction of local autocracy. The peri- 
odical peasant courts were to be done away with, they 
said, and in their stead were to be individual officers, a 
species of cadi, appointed from St. Petersburg. The 
fact that they preferred to have their cases tried by a 
single judge, rather than in an organized court, was a 
significant straw showing the bent of the uncultured 
Russian mind. 

All the lesser cases among the Russian peasantry, 
both civil and criminal, are decided by the mir on the 
basis of custom and common sense, though it is very 
certain that the justice meted out by the elders and 
starostas of the mirs is, like the collection of the taxes, 
too often a warped and unjust thing, manipulated by 
the intriguers and wire-pullers of the commune. It 
was plainly evident that the group of poor ragamuffin 



ST. PETERSBURG, I0 

moujiks in the blacksmith shop of Tchudovo would pre- 
fer to place all their affairs in the hands of one reason- 
ably honest stranger than to submit them to even their 
own rural assembly. Yet theirs was a comparatively 
prosperous community. They stated with pride that 
their mir was free from debt, and with still greater 
pride they pointed to their church and told us that it 
was richer than even the churches in Novgorod. 

'* No," they replied, to our last question. "St. 
Petersburg doesn't bother us much. The Czar takes 
only five young men each year for soldiers. They have 
to be twenty-one years of age, and they are chosen by 
the starosta and elders of the mir." 

They then went on, in reply to other questions, to 
talk about the Czar. The Czar Alexander III, they 
said, was a good man, who introduced many reforms 
(the peasants use a number of English words, such as 
reform, bank, per cent.), and if some of them didn't 
work very well for the moujik it was not his fault, but 
the fault of the local ofificials, or circumstances over 
which he had no control. They spoke affectionately 
of the late Emperor Alexander II, who, they said, 
freed " the Christians." The Russian peasants never 
called themselves serfs, but Christians, and so consider 
themselves. The term as applied to them originated 
with the Mongols, of Ghengis Khan. When the Mon- 
gols conquered and enslaved them, they called them 
Christians as a term of contempt. The moujiks accep- 
ted the appellation as a compliment and an honor, and 
have stuck to it ever since. To the moujik everything 
Russian is sacred. Russia is Holy Russia, the Czar is 
God's elected, the Russian army is the Orthodox army, 



2 o THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

the Church the Orthodox and only true church, and the 
Russians are Christians, as distinct from foreigners, who 
are heretics. 

We asked them about America. They had heard of 
it, but knew nothing about where it was. They asked 
if it was a good country to live in. 

" In America," I replied, '' every man is his own 
Czar, and nobody has to be a soldier unless he wants 
to. 

"That may be good for America," they said, shaking 
their shock heads, " but not for us. For us, our Czar 
is much better." 

" Here you have to work for five rubles a month," 
I pursued ; '^ in America a workman earns as much in 
one day. Why don't you go to America, like the 
Germans? " 

" It is true that we work hard and get small pay, 
but it is better to remain in Russia and be poor than 
to live elsewhere and grow rich. It is all very well for 
the Germans, but we like Mother Russia best of all." 

How devoted they seemed, these rag-bedecked, 
soft-spoken, polite peasants — how loyal to Mother 
Russia and the Czar! The only grievances you could 
wring from them by questioning on all points was 
against their own local and nominally self-elected 
officials. 

We passed the night in the house of a moujik, who, 
from the peasant's standpoint, would be neither rich 
nor poor. His house w^as leaning sadly to one side 
and the back wall of it had disappeared, leaving the rear 
rooms exposed ; but he owned a horse and rattletrap 
telega and cultivated land for two souls, — himself and 



ST. PETERSBURG. 21 

wife, — and was assessed taxes proportionately. His 
taxes amounted to about fifteen rubles a year and 
whatever share of pubh'c work the assembly of the 
mir assessed him. When all the family were at home 
they numbered nine persons. The good wife prided 
herself immensely on having been a domestic in the 
family of " noble-born " people before her marriage. 
She and her husband ; their eldest daughter and her 
husband ; the mother, an ancient dame ; two sons ; a 
younger daughter, and a two-year-old embryo moujik, 
who took a tremendous fancy to the author, owing to 
the bestowal of a lump of sugar on our first acquaint- 
ance, all occupied two stuffy little rooms up-stairs. 

The greater part of the space was taken up by a 
monster tiled stove, on the top of which, our hostess 
informed us, the entire family slept in the winter. It 
was difficult to see how so many people could manage 
it, unless some of them slept two deep ; but the woman 
said there was plenty of room. The chief room was 
about ten feet square. In it was a bed, an old lounge, 
a table, three chairs, a chest of drawers, two large brass 
samovars, four ikons or holy pictures, before one of 
which was a cup with oil and taper. The ikons are 
heirlooms in the families of the Russian peasantry, as 
also are the samovars. These are the most precious 
of the moujiks' household gods. There is a saying 
among them, *' If your house is on fire, save the ikon 
and samovar first, then the children." More children 
will come, they say, but if the ikon and the samovar 
are lost, the saints will be angry about the ikon, and a 
samovar costs many rubles. 

The household cradle was a curiosity. The roof of 



2 2 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

the room was low. A ring and staple were in the cen- 
ter. Through the ring was thrust a pole. At one end 
was suspended a cage-like cot for the baby, and the 
other end was above the mother's pillow. By reaching 
up and working the lever, the latest arrival in his cot 
could be danced up and down, or swung about, pendu- 
lum-fashion, by his mother. 



CHAPTER II. 

TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 

THE day was a holiday in Tchudovo. 
We were seated on a rude bench, talking to the 
starosta, on the afternoon of May 28. Although it 
was neither saint's day nor Sunday, the peasants were 
arrayed in every bit of cheap finery they possessed. 

The holiday was special. Sotniac Paishkoff, cen- 
turion, or captain, of 100 Cossacks, started May 7, 
1889, on one of the most remarkable horseback rides 
that had ever been made. The greatest feat of this 
kind heretofore known to the Russians was that of a 
military officer a few years before, from Moscow to 
Paris, on which ride, however, two horses were used. 
Paishkoff's ride was from Albazinski, a station of the 
Cossacks of the Amoor, a day's ride from the Pacific 
coast at the mouth of the Amoor, to St. Petersburg. 
The distance is over seven thousand versts, or about five 
thousand miles, and the trip was made on one horse. 

Orders had therefore been sent from St. Petersburg, 
during the latter part of Paishkoff's journey, to have 
every attention shown him, and police escort provided 
from day to day. A small convoy of Cossacks, from 
the ''Czarevitch's Own " Cossack regiment, were dis- 
patched to Novgorod to escort him in to St. Peters- 
burg, a four days' ride, and a whole regiment was to 

?3 



24 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

meet him outside the capital. He was to be promoted 
and receive an order and a pension. 

Paishkoff was expected to pass through Tchudovo 
that evening. The street was gay with colors, in which 
the red shirts of the moujiks predominated. A red 
calico shirt, black velvet trousers, and knee-boots, con- 
stitute the moujik's ideal costume. The whole popu- 
lation of the village was streaming leisurely in one 
direction. Fifty or more small boys were marshaled 
in a troop and, under the direction of the school-master, 
marched in very good step, singing lustily as they 
tramped, after the manner of Russian soldiers. 

A deputation of old men came up where we were 
sitting and proposed to the starosta that, for the honor 
of the mir, he should proceed along the road at the 
head of the people to meet and welcome Paishkoff. 

'^ Nay, nay, brothers," demurred the starosta, *' when 
the Cossack comes I will have the samovar ready with 
tea ; but from Novgorod is a long ride, and perhaps he 
will not arrive before morning." 

The starosta was right in his surmises. The Cossack 
rider didn't appear that evening. We passed the night 
in the moujik's house, and early next morning hired our 
host to drive us out on the Novgorod road to meet 
him. 

We met the popular hero a few miles out, and, turn- 
ing, kept pace with him back to Tchudovo. With him 
were the escort from the Czarevitch's regiment, an 
infantry officer from Vladimir, a rural mounted police- 
man, and a couple of Russian newspaper correspond- 
ents. 

Paishkoff turned out to be a small, wiry man, twenty- 



TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV, 25 

seven years old, with a pleasant face of almost mahog- 
any darkness from the long exposure to the dry, wintry 
winds of Siberia. He wore the Cossack lamb's-wool 
hat, leather jacket and trousers, with a broad yellow 
stripe down the latter, and heavy jack-boots. He was 
armed with a British bull-dog revolver and a small 
sword. 

His horse was a big-barreled, stocky gray pony, 
about fourteen hands high, the exact counterpart of 
horses one sees by the score in the broncho herds 
of Wyoming and Colorado. He was well chosen 
for his task. He was all barrel, hams, and shoul- 
ders. His neck and head seemed scarcely to be 
parts of the same horse. His pace was a fast, ambling 
walk that carried him over the ground at five miles an 
hour and left the big chargers of the Czarevitch's Cos- 
sacks far to the rear. The escort had to trot occa. 
sionally to catch up. The gallant little gray was as 
sleek and well-conditioned as if he had just come out 
of a clover pasture. 

Paishkoff raised his cap in reply to our salutation, and 
when my companion said that I was from America, 
lifted it again. '' We belong almost to the same part 
of the world," said he, smilingly, '' only the sea is 
between us. We have both traveled a long way, you 
by ship and train, I on horseback." The Cossack 
officer, though pleasant, was inclined to be rather taci- 
turn, and we talked more with the newspaper men 
than with him, calling upon him occasionally for con- 
firmation. One of the reporters was Sergie Riskin, 
from the Moscow Listok ; the other was the Novgorod 
correspondent of the St. Petersburg Novosti. The 



26 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

latter gentleman handed me a card, on which his name 
and profession were set forth modestly as follows: 

" Neil Ivanovitch Bogdanoffsky, correspondent Nor- 
thern Telegraph Agency, of the gazette Novosti, and 
of the Society of Russian Dramatic Authors and 
Operatic Composers, Novgorod. Own house and own 
horse." 

The last item of Mr. BogdanofTsky's identity meant 
that he lived in his own house and rode his own horse ; 
that is to say, he was a free-lance as distinct from Mr. 
Sergie Riskin and kindred members of the profession, 
who are employees at a few rubles a month and a 
house to live in, and who, when called upon to under- 
take a horseback journey, have to ride a hired animal 
or one belonging to the newspaper. 

Mr. Riskin did most of the talking. Alluding to 
the Cossack's taciturnity : '' Paishkoff is a man of 
deeds," said he, '* rather than words. He is small in 
stature, yet bigger than all the Cossacks of his escort 
put together." 

Riskin had accompanied the Cossack from Nijni. 
Novgorod, sending daily reports of his progress to the 
Listok. Whether a man of deeds himself, he was most 
decidedly a man of words. He was jolly, yet in de- 
spair. His paper, he said, had given him 1500 rubles 
to cover expenses from Nijni-Novgorod to St. Peters- 
burg, and, "■ posheevnoi ! " he had but eighty left. All 
the money had gone drinking vodka and having good 
times with police ofificers and others along the route ; 
and now what would he be able to do at St. Peters- 
burg, where, for the honor and glory of his paper, he 
was expected to drive out iri grand style to meet 



TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 27 

Paishkoff as he neared the end of his ride, and make a 
lavish display of the Listok's wealth and enthusiasm? 

Sergie rattled on, pausing very reluctantly and only 
for an instant now and then, to enable my companion 
and interpreter to ask a question. His nervous ten- 
sion, and his effort to talk faster than the movements 
of his lips could frame his words and sentences, was 
almost painful. Paishkoff, he informed us, was a re- 
markable man in many ways. While he, his comrade 
of the Novosti, and almost everybody else he had ever 
met, drank vodka, the Cossack officer refused to drink 
anything stronger than kwass, a kind of weak beer 
made from rye bread. 

" At Novgorod," said Mr. Riskin, " there was a 
grand service of prayer before a celebrated ikon in 
honor of Paishkoff's safe arrival, and after the prayers 
came a jollification, when the officers, the priests, and 
all of us got drunk and happy — all but Paishkoff. 
Paishkoff would drink nothing but kwass and tea; he's 
a wonderful man. He eats what he likes, just like 
other people. He wears undergarments of mineral 
wool; over that a linen shirt, which he gets washed 
every two weeks. During the winter he wore a 
cholera-belt to protect his stomach from the cold, and 
over all a leathern suit. He rises at five in the morn- 
ing, pops a lump of sugar in his mouth, and drinks tea 
with lemon in it before starting. 
. '' A few days after starting he was caught in a bliz- 
zard and got lost. He was nearly frozen to death, and 
would never have pulled through but for his horse's 
intelligence. He gave his horse the rein, and although 
it was pitch dark and the air full of blinding snow, the 



28 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

animal found his way back to the last station. He 
rode alone as far as Tomsk, from which point he has 
been assisted by the police. His only sickness has 
been a touch of influenza. He had experienced forty 
degrees of frost (about fifty degrees below zero, Fahr.) 
but thinks winter the best time to travel in Siberia ; 
the roads are then hard and good, and the cold stimu- 
lates the horse to travel. He has met with no adven- 
tures beyond the blizzard. Wolves? — he hasn't seen 
a wolf, and he has never fired his revolver. He has 
promised to give me his notes and Fm going to write 
a book about his journey." 

We turned from the versatile representative of the 
Moscow Listok to the hero of the ride. *'Sotniac," 
said my companion, ''Mr. Stevens wants to send word 
about you to America. Tell us the motive of your 
great journey. Is it to decide a bet ?" 

" No, no," replied Paishkoff, " only an Englishman 
or an American would do such a thing for a bet. My 
object is to prove the great powers of endurance 
possessed by the horses of the Amoor." 

'* How much will you take for your horse when you 
get to St. Petersburg? " 

" Money again," returned the Cossack, reproachfully ; 
" it would be a sin to exchange this horse for money, 
after what he has done. All the money in America 
wouldn't induce me to sell him. He will be taken 
great care of for the rest of his life — pensioned off." 

'■' And you ? — you, too, will be pensioned, I sup- 
pose." 

"We shall know better about that at St. Peters- 
burg." 



TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 29 

As we neared Tchudovo, the whole population of the 
commune was assembled at the entrance to the broad, 
long street. A beggar rushed up to the Cossack's 
horse and flung himself on the ground before it, as if 
begging its rider to trample him under its hoofs. 
Paishkoff tossed him a coin without halting, and the 
pony swerved meekly to avoid stepping on the man. 

The women crossed themselves and the men and 
boys removed their hats. The old moujiks'gave the 
cue and three hearty cheers went up for the bold 
" Kazak " as he rode past. He acknowledged the 
honor by holding his hand to his forehead. The eyes 
of the Cossack escort from the Czarevitch's regiment 
roamed wolfishly over the picturesque gathering of 
village damsels, turning in their saddles to prolong 
their scrutiny as the crowd followed behind. The 
school-master and his brigade of small urchins tramped 
solidly in ranks, four deep, singing noisily. 

The starosta, true to his idea of remaining at his 
post and extending the hospitality of his samovar, in- 
vited Paishkoff and his escort to dismount at his house. 
They refused to halt, however, and the officer of the 
Cossacks paid him scant courtesy, as though rebuking 
him for not coming out to welcome them as the others 
had done. 

The reporters sent word to their newspapers that 
an American had met Paishkoff and offered him 30,000 
rubles for his pony, for the purpose of taking it to 
America to exhibit ! That truthful item went all over 
Russia. 

Before leaving Tchudovo, we made the acquaintance 
of the pristav, or chief of police, of the district. The 



30 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

pristav invited us to spend the evening at his house. 
Vodka, raw salt fish, salted cucumbers, cheese, tea, and 
cigarettes were provided by our host, who turned out 
to be a man of considerable education and of no mean 
order of intelligence. He had been a school-master, 
manager of an estate, principal of a reformatory for 
boys, and was now chief of police of a district about 
forty miles square, containing a population of 50,000 
people. .1 had, of course, designs on the pristav's 
knowledge of his country and its institutions, and led 
the conversation into that channel. He was a genial 
and communicative soul; a thorough Russian in that 
absence of reserve, when the hand of good fellowship 
had been given, that is one of the national traits. A 
Russian police officer is compelled, nolens volens, to 
suspect the stranger on principle ; but approach him 
genially, drink tea or vodka with him, the social heart 
that beats universal in the Russian breast is touched, 
and he is yours, believing in you, confiding in you for 
the time, though he may grow suspicious again after 
you are gone. 

In talking of international politics, the pristav of 
Tchudovo was as epigrammatic as interesting. 

*' The only enemy we have," said he, " is Germany. 
Austria is an ingrate. Several times have we stepped 
into the breach and saved her ; and our reward is that 
she arrays herself against us. England doesn't under- 
stand us, and so she hates us. The Hebrew is our 
greatest economic question. The countries of the 
future are America and Russia. Our people have 
more good qualities than bad. Our faults are great, 
but our virtues are greater. Our prisons are good, and 



TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 3I 

will, in time, be better than the prisons of any country 
in the world." 

These were some of the poignant shots directed at 
the writer by the pristav, in reply to questions. Like 
all Russians whom I afterward met, he was enthusiastic 
and loyal to his country. 

"- People at a distance," said he, " remember our 
faults and forget our virtues. We have plenty of 
both. Our intentions are good, but our methods are 
faulty. As a people we have no talent for detail, and 
for that reason our administration is defective. We 
are the kindest-hearted people in the world, but a 
Russian is too easily contented with things as they are. 
We are not thrifty like the French, nor economical 
and plodding like the Germans, nor progressive and 
energetic like the Americans. You will see, if you 
travel through Russia, colonies of Germans scattered 
here and there, and you will be astonished at the con- 
trast between them and our own people. The Russian 
peasant will be living in a tumble-down house, and his 
daily fare will be black bread and cabbage soup. The 
Germans will be better fed, better housed, better 
clothed, their fences will be neat, their gardens will be 
full of vegetables, and they will be rapidly growing rich. 
You would think that the Russian moujik would envy 
his prosperous neighbor and follow his example, but he 
seldom does. He even considers himself superior, 
and laughs in a good-natured way, saying, with pride, 
as he thinks of his hard fare, 'What is death to the 
foreigner is life to the Russian.' With plenty of rich 
land in his back yard, he doesn't even take the trouble 
to grow vegetables, as you have seen for yourself in 



32 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Tchudovo. You may admire the German colonist and 
call him wise, but the moujik would win your heart 
for his good nature and generous impulses. If you 
were to fall into the river the German Avould think 
twice before jumping in after you ; but the Russian 
wouldn't even stop to consider whether he knew how 
to swim before plunging in." 

I felt very much like summing up all that the pristav 
had said about the moujik, except his generosity, in the 
one cynical comment ''laziness," yet that same morn- 
ing I had seen laborers at work at 2.30, and had been 
assured that in the summer season, the ''white nights," 
when you can see to read a newspaper in the streets of 
St. Petersburg at midnight, the moujik is astir twenty 
hours out of the twenty-four. 

On the subject of ofilicial Russia the pristav was on 
his own ground, and spoke at length. He referred to 
himself as an unit of the system. In him and his posi- 
tion, he said, we had before us a fair sample of the en- 
tire official system of Russia. He was Chief of Police 
over a district as large as two American counties, and 
was held responsible for the acts of 50,000 people. 
Half the time he was on horseback or in a troika, and 
he had been without sleep for three nights at a stretch. 
He had more than a thousand documents pigeon-holed 
in his office that needed his attention, yet the author- 
ities at St. Petersburg thought nothing of taking up 
his time in the most trivial things. With hundreds of 
important grievances, criminal cases, and what not on 
hand, one half of which he would not be able to at- 
tend to if he never slept nor rested, he had just re- 
ceived orders from St. Petersburg to personally super- 



TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 33 

intend the safe conduct of the Cossack rider, Paishkoff, 
through his district. For two days his precious time 
had been taken up riding ahead of Paishkoff, from vil- 
lage to village, arranging for his food, even cooking it 
himself, and seeing that everything was done for his 
comfort. Such things as these were more important 
in the eyes of some one in St. Petersburg than 
the affairs of his district, and it would be as much 
as the pristav's official head was worth to neglect 
them. 

While he believed paternal government was the best 
for the Russians, he cited his own case as an instance 
of its faults. The people of his district came to him 
like children to a father, and for a father to listen to the 
grievances and adjust the differences of 50,000 children 
was a physical impossibility. They came to him about 
everything. The peasants are required by law to in- 
sure their houses. If a peasant neglected or refused 
to do this the starosta of the mir would send him a 
complaint. If there was trouble about the taxes it 
was the same. Forest fires were a stock nuisance that 
kept him riding like a Cossack from one part of the 
district to another. 

Murders were one of the common crimes among the 
moujiks. These he had to investigate and report on. 
Domestic troubles were common. The young men, 
who married at eighteen or nineteen, would be taken 
away for soldiers at twenty-one. The young grass- 
widows left behind would behave scandalously, and 
the parents of the absent husbands would complain to 
him, expecting him to set matters right by putting 
them in prison. Ten men couldn't do the work he 



^4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

had to and attend to it properly, yet his salary was 
but seventy rubles a month. 

The pristav scouted the idea that Russian officers 
were naturally any more dishonest than others. The 
trouble with most of them is, he said, that their salaries 
are simply not sufficient to keep them from starving. 
They are obliged to take bribes in order to live. Yet 
if they are found out, they are punished and disgraced. 
Of all the overworked and underpaid people in the 
world, the pristav thought, Russian officials walked ofT 
with the honors. It was the same in every district 
in the empire — thousands of cases pigeon-holed be- 
cause there were not officers enough to dispose of 
them. 

We spoke of prisons and Siberia. The pristav had 
never heard of Mr. Kennan or the Century Magazine. 
This was not surprising, as his information of the outer 
world was all obtained through the medium of the 
Russian press. Yet it seemed curious in a man of 
exceptional intelligence and good education, living 
but seventy miles from St. Petersburg. During the 
past year five people had been exiled to Siberia from 
his district. That was about the average number per 
annum. All of them were either criminals or rogues, 
sent away by the mirs for persistent worthlessness. 
Not one was a " political." 

About the prisons in Siberia the pristav didn't know. 
He had never been there, he said, and so could not 
speak from personal knowledge. He had heard that 
some of them were not in good order. But the pris- 
ons of European Russia he knew, having been pristav 
in two districts and visited many others. He begged 



TCHUDOVO AND THE PkiSTAV. 35 

me to believe nothing that I might hear in condemna- 
tion of the Russian prisons proper, for he knew them 
to be as good as the prisons of any country in Europe. 
The authorities were continually devising ways and 
means of improving prisons and the treatment of pris- 
oners, and he would be glad to show me the prisons in 
his district any time I wished to see them. 

The next day I met him at the railway station, when 
the subject of prisons came up again. The pristav, 
afraid lest I might leave with erroneous ideas, invited 
me to inspect his Tchudovo prison before going. I 
was afraid of missing the train, however, and declined. 
I had no reason to doubt his word, nor was the condi- 
tion of a provincial prison a hundred versts from St. 
Peterburg of much importance. 

The pristav laughed at the idea of Russia wanting 
India. 

" That was Skobeloff's idea," he said. '' Skobeloff was 
a soldier, not a statesman. He found it a good thing 
to juggle with in our negotiations with England, but 
the idea has never been seriously entertained by sen- 
sible Russians. We hate England because she persists 
in hating us ; but if we go to war it will be with Ger- 
many. She is our only natural enemy." 

It is always interesting and instructive to hear the 
ideas of people about themselves and their country. 
It is a lesson one should always take, if possible, in a 
new field, before beginning the serious work of investi- 
gation on one's own behalf. My brief visit to Tchu- 
dovo, and the talks with the moujiks and the police of- 
ficer were the preliminary steps to an extensive tour of 
investigation. I had determined to ride on horseback 



36 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

from Moscow to the Black Sea ; then return by way of 
the Don and the Volga. 

It was deemed that the best plan of getting into 
genuine contact with the Russian people, and of study- 
ing them and the way in which they are governed, at 
close range, would be to take a long horseback journey 
through the country. This being an extraordinary 
proposition, and everything out of the ordinary being 
always regarded with suspicion in Russia, difficulties, 
of course, presented themselves at the outset. Ken- 
nan's exposures had prejudiced the Minister of the In- 
terior against American correspondents in particular, 
and to approach him for permission to undertake an 
extraordinary ride on horseback, through the heart of 
Russia, would probably be equivalent to putting one's 
head in the lion's mouth. Permission would be re- 
fused ; or, if granted, care would be taken that every- 
thing should be prepared along the route, in advance, 
to prevent one doing anything in the nature of honest 
investigation. 

It was resolved to ignore the authorities entirely, 
and — well, simply go ahead. This plan had proved 
successful in other parts of the world, why not in 
Russia also ? 



CHAPTER III. 

PLANNING THE RIDE. 

MOSCOW, then, was the first objective point, and 
along the length of Czar Nicholas's famous " ruler- 
railway," between St. Petersburg and Moscow, a few 
" impressions by the way " of Russian railway travel- 
ing may not be out of place. Every reader knows the 
story of how the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway was 
surveyed in one minute by the Emperor, with a ruler, a 
pencil, and a map. A traveler once compared this 
road to the pyramids of Egypt as a monument of Im- 
perial will. Times have improved, however, in the 
past five thousand years. It is still possible for a Czar 
of Russia to draw a straight line across a map and 
order a railway to be built along it, but these days not 
even the Russians would stand a pyramid. 

To the American popular mind this railway is a 
gigantic freak of autocratic power, toying recklessly 
with the resources of a great nation. Those informed 
of Russian affairs are aware that the ruler-and-pencil 
survey was the result of the Czar's disgust at the 
efforts of the officials, intrusted to draw up the plans, to 
serve their own personal ends, A gentleman in St. 
Petersburg told the author that the preliminary sur- 
vey, as laid before the Czar, twisted about the country 
like a serpent's trail, for no other reason than to en- 

37 



38 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

hance the value of the estates of the survey officers, 
and made the distance from St. Petersburg to Mos- 
cow nearer 1500 miles than 400. Like many other 
things, moreover, which from a distance assume fan- 
tastic proportions, the '' ruler-railway" turns out to be 
less of a freak than one would imagine, upon a closer 
acquaintance. 

It runs through a country almost as level as a floor, 
and with a population of but twenty-five to the square 
verst. Railways wind about to avoid engineering dif- 
ficulties and to accommodate cities and towns. As 
there were none of the former, and next to none of the 
latter to consider, and as the termini were the two 
greatest cities of the empire, the Czar was at least as 
much of an economist as an autocrat in making his 
famous survey. 

For an hour prior to the departure of the train the 
crowd at the station was enormous. There is as much 
leave-taking, kissing, and shedding of tears at the de- 
parture of a Russian train as there is at the sailing of 
an Atlantic liner. To nine tenths of the Russians a 
journey of a hundred miles by rail is a tremendous 
event, and each passenger has probably a dozen friends 
who have come to see them off. 

The hum, bustle, and buzz as the time for the train 
to leave draws near is astonishing to an American. 
Rough men and stout old women hug one another 
with the fervor of bears, and half the people are either 
kissing each other or shedding tears. The average 
Russian face of the middle and lower classes is singu- 
larly vacant and devoid of sentiment. But at the 
departure of the train the overflow of emotion is a 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 39 

revelation to the foreignen One is bewildered and 
yet amused at the many ways the people have of dis- 
playing their affection, one toward another, and the 
utter absence of restraint. 

Not the least amusing thing to the beholder are the 
ludicrous mistakes of the uninitiated. Several warn- 
ings are given before the train leaves, and half the peo- 
ple think each warning the last. I remember one wo- 
man who was saying the parting words to her husband 
through the open window of her car. The bell rung. 
The lady passenger leaned out ; the husband's arms 
twined lovingly around her neck ; their lips met — one ! 
two ! ! three ! ! ! — ah ! Between the first kiss and the 
third the woman's mouth had expanded from a tempt- 
ing smile to a grin so broad that a fourth was impossi- 
ble. So, drawing back into the car, both expected the 
train to move off. 

The train didn't move, however, and an officer told 
the man they had fifteen minutes to wait yet and 
that there would be another signal. Instead of one, it 
turned out that there were two. And so this loving 
couple treated the subscriber, and an Englishman who 
was seeing me off, to the above delightful little tab- 
leaux no less than three times, two of which were the 
result of false alarms. 

The Russian passenger coaches are a compromise 
between the English and American. You can pass 
from one end of the train to the other as with us, but 
by closing a door you can shut yourself up in a little 
apartment, as in England. Only forty pounds of bag- 
gage is carried free, but bundles are allowed to be 
taken in the passenger cars. The consequence is that 



40 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

every nook of the car is stuffed with bundles, band- 
boxes; baskets, and valises. Economical old peasants, 
who have been to the capital, perhaps, for the only 
visit of their lives, struggle into the car with a dozen 
bundles and boxes to avoid paying anything for bag- 
gage. The train is miles away ere the people get 
comfortably settled down. 

Three fourths of the people travel third class. 
Second class is as comfortable as first, and your fellow- 
passengers here are military officers who live on their 
salaries, well-to-do merchants, and the better class of 
citizens generally. First-class passengers are foreign 
travelers or natives of wealth, ostentation, or distinc- 
tion. 

In a seat near me were a couple of students going to 
spend their summer vacation in the Valdai Hills. 
Both could speak English. They talked freely. One 
of them gave me a new version of a late trouble with 
the students — an outbreak in St. Petersburg and Mos- 
cow. One of the students, he said, had received a 
letter from a lady convict in Siberia, telling of the 
miseries she and others endured. The students there- 
upon drew up a memorial to the Emperor and pre- 
sented it to one of the professors to be delivered. The 
professor advised them to trouble their heads with 
their own business, and tore it up. A row ensued, the 
police and Cossacks were ordered out, and '' two 
thousand students were sent to Siberia." 

Fortunately my experience of the East had familiar- 
ized me with the recklessness and unreliability of its 
people's tongues in regard to figures, distances, and 
time. The Russian seems as much an Oriental as the 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 41 

Persian in this respect. The rest of the story was, not 
unlikely, true enough, but the " two thousand stu- 
dents sent to Siberia " was worthy of the Persian who, 
within a stone's throw of the mud walls of Teheran, 
told me that they were of marble. 

Many of the exaggerated stories that reach us from 
Russia and the East are the result of the European 
correspondent taking the statements of the natives too 
literally. 

If you are traveling in Turkey or Persia, the native, 
believing you to be anxious to get to your destination, 
will assure you that it is but an hour away, even 
though it be several days. In like manner, these Rus- 
sian students, knowing that, as an American, I was 
probably interested in the question of students being 
sent to Siberia, evolved from their inner consciousness 
the story of the two thousand. 

Neither Turks nor Russians expect you to accept 
their statements literally. A polite desire to please, 
to say something that they imagine will fall pleasantly 
an your ear, is the motifs in so far as there is one ; but 
with them both, the tongue is more often but the vehi- 
cle for the ventilation of the vaguest imaginings. In- 
tellectual apathy is the explanation. Ask six different 
officials, about a railway station, as to the time of de- 
parture of a certain train, and, whether in Turkey or 
Russia, you will be very sure to get a half-dozen con- 
flicting replies. Too careless to remember and too 
lazy of brain to reflect, the answer will be the time they 
happen to think of first. In our conception of the 
Russians we are, I think, too apt to neglect this trait 
of their character. 



42 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

If the Russian is lazy, however, he is far from being 
dull. The number of people one meets who under- 
stand several languages is astonishing. Across the 
aisle from us sat an officer and a young lady com- 
panion. My attention was attracted to the latter, be- 
fore our train had gone far, by reason of the number of 
cigarettes she smoked. She was almost a chain-smoker, 
lighting one cigarette after another from the stump of 
the one just consumed. The students, seeing that I 
was interested, made some remark about the custom 
of smoking as indulged in by the ladies of Russia-. We 
talked on a while, and all agreed that the habit was 
more likely to grow on a woman than a man, and that 
for a young lady to permit herself to become a ciga- 
rette devotee was a mistake. At this juncture, the fair 
smoker could keep her countenance no longer. She 
had understood all that we had said ! Before reaching 
Moscow I discovered that fully one half the passengers 
in my car knew English ! Now, a Russian might 
knock about the United States for six months without 
falling in with anybody who could talk with him in 
his own tongue. 

The idea these students had of Russia's international 
politics was that everybody hated her except France 
and the United States. It sounded queer that des- 
potic Russia should find friends only in these two 
governmental antitheses to herself. 

I asked them which they considered the better 
government of the two, that of the United States or 
Russia. 

''Russia," they said. 

"Why.?" 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 43 

" Because if one man kills another, you hang him. 
If a Russian commits murder, we only put him in 
prison and we don't care much if he escapes alto- 
gether ! " 

"But you send political offenders to Siberia." 

" It is true, for to plot against the Czar is treason, 
and treason in other countries is punishable with 
death." Strange to say, I had heard this same view of 
the case several times since my arrival in Russia. It 
is curious logic from our point of view that a govern- 
ment is good because it lays a light hand on the mur- 
derer and a heavy one on a political offender. 

But I am wandering away from the railway. 

The result of the Emperor Nicholas's arbitrary 
survey is that many of the stopping places are nothing 
but platforms for the taking on and putting off of pas- 
sengers and freight for distant points. Such stations 
as there are, are of wood, comfortable and artistic 
structures, where painters with yellow paint seem to be 
always painting the sides, and painters with red paint 
always painting the roofs. Small parks and gardens, 
and even fountains, embellish the two or three more 
pretentious stations along the route. 

At all the stations the buffets are excellent, and the 
service reasonable. The railway buffets are one of the 
best things in Russia. In the larger cities, a great 
many people go there to eat instead of to restaurants. 
The privileges of the buffets are let out to large 
caterers, like the Spiers & Pond railway buffets in 
England. The results in Russia are excellent. 

The waiters are chiefly Tartars, — bright, attentive 
young men, — who, I believe, receive no salary, but 



44 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

depend on tips for their remuneration. The Tartars, 
who three or four centuries ago were dominating the 
country, and at one time enslaved and persecuted the 
Russians, have now become table waiters in the 
country. Nearly all the large hotels, as well as the 
railway restaurants, have Tartar waiters. They form 
a guild, or artel, and their numbers are regularly 
recruited by young boys, who are brought from the 
Tartar villages of the Volga provinces. Making them- 
selves useful among the young men, at a big railway 
restaurant or hotel dining-room, you see two or three 
small boys, yellow-cheeked, oblique-eyed, and black- 
haired. They are young Tartars, learning to be 
waiters, under the watchful eyes of their elder 
brothers. 

All the tips are pooled and the various sources of 
income go into a common purse, and the proceeds are 
periodically apportioned. An artel is a species of 
workmen's commune, by means of which the welfare, 
honesty, and earnings of each is the concern of all. 
Some of the artels, as the artel of bank porters and 
hotel employees, among other functions insures the 
honesty of its members. If one of its members steals 
money or property, the artel makes good the loss. 
Notices in the bedrooms of the hotels advise guests to 
deposit their valuables, not with the hotel clerk, as 
with us, but with the agent of the artel, who has an 
office and a safe in the hotel, and is responsible for 
any losses. 

The grade of accommodation, to suit the length or 
shortness of the passengers' purses, is admirable. You 
can spend twenty rubles on a dinner, or you can carry 



1 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 45 

your own provisions, tea and sugar, and buy a pot of 
boiling water, holding enough for six glasses of tea, 
for one kopeck. A gourmet's feait for a inoujik is a 
glass of vodka, a big salted cucumber, a slice of smoked 
sturgeon, rye bread, a glass of tea, with a slice of 
lemon in it, and a cigarette. 

At every station is a gendarme, with long sword and 
revolver, blue uniform with red trimmings, lamb's-wool 
hat with tall red plume — as gorgeous an individual as 
the rural carbineers one sees at the stations in Italy. 

At every station, also, are peasant girls selling beer- 
bottles of milk, and members of the '' Orthodox," in 
rags and tatters, humbly begging, " for Christ's sake," a 
kopeck. All true Russians are Orthodox, but the wan- 
faced wretch, with unkempt hair and bleary eyes, who 
wails for alms as the train glides slowly into the station, 
is peculiarly so. We toss him a coin, he crosses him- 
self a half-dozen times, calling down on you the bless- 
ings of many saints, then moves on to the next win- 
dow. 

'' For Christ's sake, a kopeck for the Orthodox," he 
repeats. The scene wafted me to similar scenes in 
other countries and alien religions. On the great pil- 
grim roads of Persia the half-starved devotee, footing 
his weary way a thousand miles without means to pay 
his expenses, begs for alms in the name of Mahomet. 

" I am a good Moslem on a pilgrimage to Meshed," 
says he ; " therefore give me alms." 

" Give me alms," says the Russian peasant, " for I 
am a Christian." 

In the north the Russian locomotives burn wood, in 
the south refuse petroleum. Pine forests cover about 



46 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

all the land between Moscow and St. Petersburg that 
has not been cleared for cultivation or burned off. 
Tremendous quantities of wood are piled up at the 
stations for the railway company and for shipment to 
cities. The piles are built up like cord-wood and at 
some stations cover fifty acres of ground. St. Peters- 
burg and Moscow burn wood almost exclusively, and 
the provincial towns and villages know no other fuel. 
The quantity of pine wood consumed in the long, cold 
Russian winter by two cities, the size of Brooklyn, is 
enormous, and the cutting and transportation of the 
same give occupation to a large share of the surround- 
ing peasantry. 

At nearly every station was seen the inevitable 
drunken moujik, stupid and happy. One of them at- 
tempted to pass through our car. He stumbled over a 
bundle. " Nitchevo ! " he said in a maudlin voice, as 
he scrambled up. " Nitchevo ! " said two or three 
sympathetic souls ; " never mind." 

Nitchevo is the most frequent exclamation one hears 
in Russia. It means anything of a negative degree. 
Nitchevo ! — never mind. Nitchevo ! — pray don't men- 
tion it. Nitchevo ! — everything will come all right, 
Nitchevo ! — the horse is dead, but God will provide 
another. 

Our train plodded along, slowly but surely, like the 
tortoise in the race. It took twenty-three hours to 
carry us something over four hundred miles. We 
grew impatient as the day waned and mentally wished 
we had taken the " Courier train," which does it in 
twelve. But the noise of the engine, which in other 
countries seems to pant and puff with exertion, here 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 47 

bade us '' Nitchevo ! " and seemed to remind us re- 
proachfully that time was made for man, not man for 
time. 

Mackenzie Wallace, in his excellent work on Russia, 
tells us that the Russian merchant has reached the 
same level of commercial morality, on the road toward 
honest dealing, that is occupied in England by the 
horse dealer. It may be that the English horse dealer 
is grossly libeled by the comparison ; but, however 
that may be, there can be no two opinions about the 
character of the gentlemen who gain their livelihood 
by buying, selling, and swapping horses in Russia. A 
man may be a knave in any country without being a 
horse dealer, but the country has yet to be discovered 
where a man can make a success as a trader in horse- 
flesh without an occasional breach of faith with his 
conscience. Certainly, an inquirer after an honest 
horse dealer for a museum of ethnographical curiosi- 
ties would not turn to Russia. Least of all would he 
go to Moscow. 

Moscow is the commercial Mecca of the empire, as 
well as the Mecca of its imperial and, next to Kiev, 
its religious traditions. The merchants of Moscow are 
understood to be the shrewdest and the wealthiest in 
Russia ; and the " Moskovsky " horse dealer has at- 
tained such a tremendous height in the scale of roguery, 
that he is regarded by provincial members of the fra- 
ternity with a degree of admiration amounting to awe. 

When, therefore, the author turned his footsteps, 
one fine day in June, 1890, in the direction of a large 
open space in the ancient capital of the Czars, where 
these crafty gentlemen exhibit, for the benefit of pos- 



48 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

sible customers, the accumulated results of life-long 
and hereditary trickery in selling spavined and broken- 
winded horses to credulous humans, with a view to 
buying a horse, a sensation as of venturing on exceed- 
ingly slippery ground may well be excused. ■ 

A slight knowledge of horse-flesh would be sufficient 
to prevent me being taken in much on the score of age, 
or other " points " visible to the eye ; but, on the other 
hand, a stranger, knowing nothing of the language, 
nothing of the idiosyncrasies of Russian horse dealing, 
and very little about the prices of horses in Moscow, 
would be sure to be looked upon as a veritable wind- 
fall by every dealer who had on hand a '* touched up " 
animal. 

For the purpose of seeing Russia and the Russians 
to better advantage than from viewing them from the 
windows of a railway train, or on the streets of the 
cities, I had determined on taking a horseback ride of 
more than a thousand miles ; a trying journey for a 
horse in the middle of summer. It was, therefore, very 
necessary that I should secure a sound, strong animal. 

The probability of my doing so, within the few days 
that I intended to stay in Moscow, vanished like a 
^ shadow as I reached the horse-market and approached 
a group of dealers. The apparition of a stranger, and 
apparently a foreigner to boot, coming their way, pro- 
duced on these worthies a truly magical effect. I 
became the cynosure of a dozen pairs of the craftiest- 
looking eyes that ever attempted to look through and 
through, discover the inmost thoughts, size up the 
mental caliber, the horse knowledge, and the purse of 
a likely-looking victim. 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 49 

The typical Russian horse dealer is a whiskered in- 
dividual in wrinkled top-boots, loose black trousers, 
a black frock coat, and a black cap with a patent- 
leather peak. He is much given to wearing the shiny- 
peak of his cap well down on the bridge of his nose, 
in order that he may furtively examine the horse-buy- 
ing section of humanity from beneath it. If the sub- 
ject of his scrutiny happens to be a person not given 
to close observation, the glint of the horse dealer's 
peering eyes will be confounded with the glint of his 
patent-leather peak, and he might easily be taken for a 
man engaged in the pious examination of his own 
conscience. 

After looking at a dozen horses, I gave it up, and 
returned home to think up some other plan of getting 
what I wanted. Though I had not bought a horse, 
my ideas of the Russian horse dealer had undergone a 
decided change. As arrant a knave as ever preyed on 
the ignorance and credulity of others, his roguery is 
yet of an order so crude and palpable as to seem ridic- 
ulous in the eyes of one who has had dealings with the 
same fraternity in America. 

I approached the Moscow horse-market in fear and 
trembling, and came away horseless, but very much 
amused. 

There is one method of arriving at the price of any- 
thing, that seems to be applicable all over Russia. 
The seller asks twice as much as he is willing to take, 
and the buyer offers half as much as he is willing to 
give. Commencing on this basis, the vendor gradu- 
ally comes down in his prices, and the customer warily 
advances, until a bargain is made. The Moscow horse 



^o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANC. 

dealers not only asked me five hundred rubles for 
horses worth two hundred, but they seemed to think 
the above method to be an equally fair way of arriving 
at a horse's age. They showed me a horse which they 
stated to be five years old, but which was in reality 
fifteen. I had already obtained a hint as to their 
methods, and by yielding at the fifteen year end, in- 
duced them to give way at the five-year end, a year at 
a time, until they reluctantly admitted that he might 
be nine years old. 

The roguery of the Russian horse dealers consists 
largely in brazen mendacity, and in his reluctance to 
deal with you at all unless he can swindle you. You 
may know more about the horse you are trying to 
buy from him than he does, and prove it to him in a 
dozen ways, but he will haggle and dicker, argue and 
drink tea with you for a week, rather than let you take 
him at a reasonable price. As I had no inclination to 
waste a week on nothing, I looked elsewhere. 

Dr. Carver, the celebrated champion shot, together 
with a troupe of cowboys and Indians, called '' Wild 
America," happened to be exhibiting in Moscow at 
the time. I applied to them, and was thus fortunate 
enough to obtain a horse that carried me bravely 
through the trying heat of a Russian summer, in six 
weeks, to Sevastopol. 

Texas was a Hungarian mustang, which the manager 
of "" Wild America " had bought in Budapest, with a 
view to breaking him in to the wild work of the arena. 
Texas, however, turned out to be afraid of the shooting ; 
afraid of the Indians; afraid of the cowboys; afraid 
of the band ; afraid of the Deadwood stage ; afraid of 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 5 1 

the wild steers; afraid of the crowd ;. afraid of almost 
everything under the sun. That he was afraid of the 
shooting, I knew before buying him. All the other 
evidences of his constitutional timidity enumerated, 
gradually dawned upon me during the first few days 
on the road. I never ceased to be thankful that they 
didn't dawn upon me in advance, however, rather than 
as the result of experience, for had they done so he 
would have been passed over and probably a much 
worse animal secured. 

It took me half an hour to get Texas over the first 
tiny rivulet, and, after crossing hundreds, he flinched 
at stepping into the well-nigh dry bed of the historic 
Alma, at the end of our long journey. With bridges 
it was the same. Between Moscow and the battle- 
fields of the Crimean war are hundreds of bridges, 
small and great, all of which Texas was forced to cross, 
always against his will, often under the lash ; yet he 
attempted to turn tail at the last one, exactly as he 
had done at the first. 

He shied at houses, people, cattle, dogs, sheep, hil- 
locks, and sometimes at his own shadow. Left a 
moment to himself, his first idea was to get rid of his 
saddle, either by rolling, or by rubbing against tree, 
post, or railing. He objected to being led, unless an- 
other horse was ahead of him. When tired he was a 
stumbler. Five times on the journey he went down all 
of a heap from stumbling against some scarcely visible 
stone or other inequality, and sent me sprawling over 
his head- And nothing but unceasing vigilance on 
my part prevented the recurrence of this undignified, 



5 2 THR UGH R US SI A OX A M US TA NG. 

to say nothing of dangerous, performance fifty times 
instead of five. 

Yet, with all this, Texas was a good sort of a horse. 
The only grudge born in memory against him is for 
blundering down on a piece of rough macadam road, 
and peeling his knees and nose, when but two days 
march from Sevastopol, where I intended offering him 
to a horse dealer as an exceptionably fine animal. As 
such he would, undoubtedly, be passed on to the next 
customer by the dealer ; for he was as handsome a 
horse as ever wore a shoe. With all his faults he was 
parted from with a pang of regret. Before we reached 
the shores of the Black Sea he would follow me about 
like a dog, so long as one didn't lead the way across a 
bridge, or near anything that excited his suspicion. 

From *' Wild America " was also obtained a good 
cowboy saddle, made at Houston, Texas. It was the 
easiest saddle the writer ever rode in. At an early 
stage on the road, however, I decided that it was too 
heavy for the hot weather and the long journey, and 
exchanged it for a light Circassian seat. The Circas- 
sian saddle consists of a naked wood ^n :rame, and a 
pillow-like cushion of soft Russian leather, stuffed with 
goat hair. The light frame rests on a thick pad on 
the horse's back, and the soft leather cushion is 
pinched tightly in the middle by a surcingle, that 
passes round it and under the horse, as a third girth. 
The natives ride with a stirrup so short that the leg is 
bent as in kneeling, and the foot plays no part in re- 
lieving the weight in the saddle. The position is at 
first extremely uncomfortable, and I preferred to 
lengthen the stirrups to getting accustomed to it. 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 53 

The merit of the Circassian saddle is its lightness. 
It weighed less than half as much as the Texan. The 
cushion seat, too, is handy on a ride through a country 
where travelers are expected to provide their own bed- 
ding, for it makes a capital pillow. Whether it makes 
a better seat for a long ride than a hard saddle the 
writer is not prepared to say, never having given the 
latter a long trial. It is the saddle of Asia, — the home 
of the liorse, and the nursery of equestrianism. Cos- 
sacks, Circassians, Kirghis, Persians, Tartars, Arabs — 
these are, and have always been, the finest horsemen in 
the world ; they all ride, with slight modifications, this 
form of saddle. 

The arrival of an American in Moscow, who intended 
riding on horseback from that city to the Crimea, was 
no sooner known than a candidate presented himself as 
a companion on the journey. The ambitious young 
man who made this proposition was a student in one 
of the Moscow universities, who had just completed his 
studies. As he could speak very good English I 
readily agreed to the arrangement. His brother would 
provide him with a horse and I was to bear all ex- 
penses of the trip. 

Sascha turned out to be a typical Russian. As an 
interpreter on the road, and an explainer of the man- 
ners and customs of his countrymen, he was invaluable. 
But it was as an ever-present mirror and reflection of 
Russian character in his own person that he did me 
the greatest service. He was singularly warm and 
impulsive, and strangely unreliable, contradictory, 
quixotic, and inconsistent. 

Never did a young man start on an undertaking 



5 4 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. 

with greater enthusiasm, or brighter visions of advan- 
tages to be reaped from success. In the autumn he 
was to enter upon his military duties by joining a regi- 
ment of cavalry. The ride would win him fame and 
prestige among his comrades, and bring him to the no- 
tice of his superior officers. He would gain a knowledge 
of his country, and, by having some one to talk to in 
that language, improve his English. He would keep a 
diary, and upon his return write a book. In the eyes 
of his relatives and his fiajicee, the daughter of a mer- 
chant of Tula, he would be a hero. 

The keeping of a diary proved too irksome at the end 
of three days, so he gave it up and decided that it 
would be easier and better to wait until I had pub- 
lished a book in America, when he would translate it 
into Russian. A week's journey on our road we called 
on his fiancee. The young lady was delighted 
with him, for what he was doing was, in her eyes, 
an heroic performance. She presented him with a 
bouquet, and stuck rose-buds in his hat-band when we 
rode away. Scarcely had the roses faded, and the vis- 
ion of his sweetheart's approving smiles grown dim, 
than he began to dwell on the contrast between the 
fatigue and discomforts of the road and the ease and 
pleasure of life in Moscow. And he eventually threw 
up the sponge and returned, when but twelve days* 
ride from the end of our journey. 

In intellect, he was as bright as he was incapable of 
logical reasoning. He knew four languages and could 
quote Shakespeare by the page ; but could never be 
brought to understand why the Czar couldn't make 
Russia as rich as he chose, by simply ordering the 



PLANNING THE RIDE. 55 

mint to manufacture mountains of paper rubles. In 
money matters he was an understudy of the old race 
of Russian nobles, who used to cuin their serfs and 
estates at home in order that they might squander 
thousands of pounds ostentatiously on the green cloth 
tables at Monaco, and fling handfuls of Napoleons at 
waiters' heads in Paris. From all this, it will be seen 
that tliough fortunate in my horse, I was a great deal 
more fortunate in my companion. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE START FROM MOSCOW. 

IT was a warm, moist morning in the middle of June, 
when Sascha, the young student of Moscow, and 
the writer rode out of Moscow. The eminently re- 
spectable section of old Moscow's conservative citi- 
zens, the representatives of her wealth and beauty as 
well as of her mercantile pre-eminence, were still asleep. 
At the doors of the big mansions, and the fashionable 
apartment-houses, the dvorniks, curled up in their huge 
overcoats, were imitating the admirable example of the 
inmates. 

A few of these watchmen, who had proved their fit- 
ness- for their position by sleeping, through the night, 
the untroubled sleep of the righteous, craned their 
necks above the all-enveloping sheepskins, at the 
sound of our horses' feet, as a setting hen peers over 
the edge of her nest when apprehensive of intruders. 
And having satisfied their curiosity by a sleepy scru- 
tiny of my American cow-boy saddle, drew their heads 
down again, once more in unreflective imitation of the 
hen. 

We rode along a narrow street in the old Moscovite 
quarter, where the houses were painted in many bright 
colors and ornamented with woodwork, curiously 
carved. Balconies, where, a few hours earlier, the 

56 



THE START FROM MOSCOW. 57 

young bloods of Moscow, military officers, and visiting 
merchants from country towns, drank champagne, 
listened to the balalaika and the accordion, believing, 
in the intoxication of the hour, the place, and the 
occasion, that they were having a capital time, were 
now closely curtained. 

In deference to the ignorance that still prevails in 
Russia, the shopkeepers of the cities are obliged to 
decorate their signs with pictures of what they have to 
sell, in addition to setting forth the nature of their 
business in words. The narrow street we were now 
traversing, being a part of the older section of the 
town, was curiously realistic in this matter. Painters 
and sculptors had lent their art, that there might be 
no mistakes by rich country merchants unable to read, 
and the curtained balconies were supported by statuary 
never intended to represent the saints. To this part 
of old Moscow, though it was six o'clock in the morn- 
ing, night had only just begun. 

We came to a quarter where there seemed to be 
nothing but boulevards, with avenues of young trees, 
big barracks, and equally big and gloomy-looking in- 
stitutions of learning. Under the windows of the big 
commercial college, where my companion had lately 
graduated in the theoretical part of a profession that 
would enable him to hold his own against his mercan- 
tile countrymen, we halted a moment. Sascha was in 
high glee. Here also, he informed me, was learned 
the language that had been instrumental in bringing 
him my acquaintance, and had recommended him as a 
companion for the ride on which we were now starting. 

His old tutors, as well as his comrades, came in for 



58 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

a share of his attentions. Though absent in the flesh, 
Sascha declared he could still see them through the 
gray stone walls, and, stretching out his hand toward 
his old dormitory, he apostrophized the tutors in a 
most theatrical manner, declaring his keen satisfaction 
at the mighty change in his fortunes, that had trans- 
ferred him from the world of stools and studies, to the 
saddle and the freedom of a horse's back. 

Beyond the universities, we plunged into plebeian 
Moscow, the world of red-shirted workmen and cheap 
frocked women ; low vodka shops and bare, roomy 
traktirs, where the red-shirted workmen assemble each 
evening to gossip and swallow astonishing quantities 
of tea, inferior in quality and very, very weak. 

Here was Moscow's social and material contrast to 
the big houses, with the sleeping dvorniks, and of the 
silent street of painted house fronts, curtained bal- 
conies and all the rest. Though day had not yet 
dawned for other sections of Moscow, it had long since 
dawned for the inhabitants of this. Employers of 
labor in Moscow know nothing of the vexed questions 
as to eight-hour laws, ten-hour laws, or even laws of 
twelve. Thousands of red shirts, issuing from the 
crow^ded hovels of this quarter, like rats from their 
hiding places, had scattered over the city long before 
our arrival on the scene ; other thousands were still 
issuing forth, and streaming along the badly cobbled 
streets. Under their arms, or in tin pails, were loaves 
of black rye bread, their food for the day, which would 
be supplemented at meal times by a salted cucumber, 
or a slice of melon, from the nearest grocery. 

For five versts, according to Sascha, who, Russian- 



THE START FROM MO SCO IV. 59 

like, had no idea, however, of the population and size 
of the city, though he had been born and educated in 
it, we rode over Moscow's execrable pavements, then 
emerged on to a macadam road. Workmen from the 
quarter we had just passed through had preceded us in 
this direction hours before, and were now met in the 
character of teamsters, bringing in petroleum from the 
big iron tanks that loomed up in the distance ahead. 

Though Moscow can boast of its electric light .as 
well as of gas, it is yet a city of petroleum. Coal is 
dear, and, in the matter of electric lights and similar 
innovations from the wide-awake Western world, 
Moscow is, as ever, doggedly conservative. So repug- 
nant, indeed, to this stronghold of ancient and honor- 
able Muscovite sluggishness, is the necessity of keeping 
abreast with the spirit of modern improvement, that 
the houses are not yet even numbered. There are no 
numbers to the houses in Moscow ; only the streets 
are officially known by name. To find anybody's 
address, you must repair to the street, and inquire of 
the policeman or drosky driver, who are the most 
likely persons to know, for the house belonging to Mr. 
So-and-so, or in which that gentleman lives. It seems 
odd that in a country where the authorities deem it 
necessary to know wliere to put their hand on any 
person at a moment's notice, the second city of the 
empire should be, in 1890, without numbers to its 
houses. 

The macadam road, though just without the city, 
and thronged with produce and petroleum wagons, 
was but a slight improvement on the cobbled streets. 
We were glad when we eventually found ourselves 



6o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

fairly in the country. Our way led through the estates 
of Prince Galitzin, a wealthy land owner in this part of 
Russia. Villages dotted the level landscape thickly, 
their positions being indicated by big churches painted 
white, with green spires and domes. Russia is a 
hedgeless country, and fences are confined to gardens 
and house grounds, or to special bits near the country 
mansions of wealthy landlords, such as Prince Galitzin. 

This nobleman's country residence was a fine, large 
mansion, on the edge of a lake, several hundred acres 
in extent, which had been artificially created in the 
good old day of serfdom, princely squanderings in 
Paris, and a steady diet of champagne and sterlet at 
home. The serfs are " freed " ; we hear nothing nowa- 
days of Russian spendthrifts in Paris, and the land 
owners who can afford to entertain largely on the 
above named costly articles of consumption, have 
dwindled to a very small company indeed. 

Who has profited by the mighty change? Popular 
supposition opens wide its eyes, in astonishment at 
the ignorance implied in such a question, and conde- 
scendingly replies, '' The peasants, of course. Were 
they not formerly serfs, and are now free from the 
hardships of having to work without pay? " 

The peasants — we rode through their villages ; and, 
bearing in mind this popular conception, one could 
but marvel at their condition, and wonder if, like so 
many other changes brought about under the direc- 
tions of a too paternal government, their improvement 
was not theoretic rather than material. 

But it is early on the journey to begin moralizing 
on the condition of the people whose acquaintance 



THE START FROM MOSCOW. 6i 

we were only beginning to make, and whose appear- 
ance and manner of life were, as yet, matters of 
Liriosity. 

The forests through which our road led were in 
their happiest midsummer mood as to vegetation, and 
the day being sultry, threatening thunder-storms, their 
savagest as to flies. My companion's horse, who was 
a tough old charger, obtained from a Cossack officer, 
held his own stolidly among the myriads of hungry flies, 
of many sizes and varieties, that assailed us in the 
patches of primeval forest. 

But I early learned that, among his other eccentrici- 
ties of character, Texas considered the attack of even 
a single fly so gross an insult, as to justify a combined 
assault on the offender with mouth, feet, and tail. In 
other words, Texas was remarkably tender-skinned, and 
sensitive to a degree in the particular matter of flies and 
mosquitoes. At this early stage of the journey, also, 
he promptly asserted the authority of a horse to have 
the first voice in the matter of his own comfort by 
rolling with the saddle, when we halted for refresh- 
ments at a village. He was a persistent advocate of 
horses' rights ; and all the way to the Crimea never 
neglected to remind his rider that horses as well as 
women's rights women, had abstract rights that men 
were bound to respect, regardless of their own judg- 
ment in the matter. 

The villages about Moscow echo something of the 
venerable atmosphere of legendary lore that hangs 
about the ancient capital itself. Sascha pointed out 
one village church where, at the approach of a proces- 
sion of priests carrying a miracle-working ikon, the 



62 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

big iron bell had suddenly disappeared from the bel- 
fry. Nobody saw where it vanished to, but it was 
supposed to have flown into a near-by lake; for on cer- 
tain nights a sound, as of a bell ringing, may be heard 
issuing from the depths. 

The flowers, the ferns, the grasses that carpeted the 
forest, all served to conjure up in my companion's 
mind scraps of peasant-lore, so keen and enthusiastic 
was his enjoyment of these, our first few hours in the 
saddle. 

Rye and potatoes were the crops that lined the road, 
in the big open fields, which were clearings in the vast 
forest that covers the whole of northern Russia. For- 
est lands play a conspicuous and important part in the 
economic affairs of the Russian country and people. 
Russia is primarily a country of " land and timber." 
The wealthiest Russians are those who own the broad- 
est tracts of the one, and the most valuable and acces- 
sible patches of the other. The most desirable pos- 
session in Russia, setting aside choice mining or city 
property, is a tract of heavy pine forest, accessible to 
one of the large cities by rail or river. Facility of 
transportation, however, is everything. A tree five 
hundred miles inland from where a purchaser could be 
found for it, becomes a mere encumbrance to the 
ground, and an obstacle to cultivation ; whereas, in 
the part of Russia traversed by our first week's ride, 
it is one of the chief sources of wealth. 

In remote districts the peasants clear the ground by 
burning up all but the choicest sticks of timber in a 
patch of forest, and, by the aid of the ashes, produce 
crops on soil that would otherwise be too poor for ^ul- 



THE START FROM MOSCOW, (i'^ 

tivation. But on this first day's ride, and after, we 
passed many tracts. of pine forest that had been set 
out, and carefully preserved from harm. Fir trees 
seem to grow best on barren soil, that would grow 
nothing else. It is customary for Russian land owners, 
with an eye to the future, to plant tracts of forest, for 
the benefit of their posterity. Many of these artificial 
tracts are beautiful to the eye, the young trees stand- 
ing in straight, long rows, whichever way you look 
through the forest, like fields of maize in the West. 
These tracts of forest are often given by Russian land 
owners as dowry with a daughter. An heiress, in 
Russia, often means a young lady whose father will fit 
her out with a blooming trousseau and a " tract of 
forest." Sascha spoke to me of Russian heiresses with 
'' dowries of 300,000 rubles in forest." 

The important part played by these forests, in 
Russia, is continually thrust upon the notice of the 
traveler, whose business is to take cognizance of his sur- 
roundings. It is the fuel of St. Petersburg and Moscow 
and all the villages, towns, and cities of the northern 
half of the country. All summer long the canals of St. 
Petersburg are filled with monster barges, containing 
as much as four hundred tons apiece of neatly cut fire- 
wood. They are moored in the Neva ; they crawl along 
the canals and smaller streams, and are towed in long 
strings by stout tugs across the Gulf of Finland, Lakes 
Ladoga and Onega, and the smaller lakes of the 
adjacent provinces, all streaming toward the great 
northern capital. For eight months of the year, six of 
which are very cold, St. Petersburg has to be heated, and 
the fuel is wood. With Moscow it is the same, only 



64 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

the supply has to reach the old capital by rail and 
road. 

The Russian peasants of these great northern forest 
regions are the most skillful axmen in the world, 
begging the pardon of the lumbermen of Maine and 
Minnesota ; and the forest is their good foster-mother, 
without whom they would have a sorry enough time 
of it, dodging the tax-collector's knout. The land is 
poor, and the amount allotted to them by the govern- 
ment when they were emancipated is often insufficient 
for their bare support, saying nothing of taxes. Since 
there is no escaping the latter, great numbers of these 
northern moujiks literally '' take to the woods " for the 
greater part of the year. 

All winter the ring of ax, and the buzzing music of 
the sawmills resound through the forests ; and men and 
teams transport fire-wood, railway ties, telegraph poles, 
lumber, and blocks for paving city streets, to the rail- 
ways and river banks. With the thawing of rivers 
and canals in spring, a great movement begins in 
building huge rafts of timber, and starting off big 
barges of fire-wood. The barges are generally frail 
affairs, that are broken up at the journey's end. 

Much of the forest is owned by the government, 
even about St. Petersburg and Moscow. "■ Government 
property" in Russia means something very different 
from the American idea of the same. No such liberty 
is permitted as with the unsettled domains of Uncle 
Sam. Everything available on government land is 
expected to yield a revenue, as on the property of 
an individual. It " belongs to the Czar." Why 
should the Czar permit liberties with his patch of forest 



THE START FROM MOSCOW, 65 

on the right hand side of the road any more than 
Count Trotoff, on the left ? 

Whether you put up at a hotel traktir,, or with a 
moujik on the Russian roads, all feed is supplied by 
weight or measurement. A primitive form of beam 
scales, with brass dots to accommodate the mathemati- 
cal incapacity of the unlettered moujik, instead of fig- 
ures, is produced to weigh your pood or half-pood of 
hay or cut grass, and measures are filled with oats and 
leveled off. Hay and oats are almost always to be 
procured. 

The accommodation for man is not particularly in- 
viting. The village traktir is a little better than a 
Chinese wayside inn, but not much. Doughy black 
bread, eggs, and tea are the refreshments, and in sum- 
mer your rights to what you purchase are disputed by 
myriads of persistent flies. The Russian fly worries 
you all night as well as all day. The brief summer of 
his activity commences late and ends early, and he evi- 
dently believes his short life should always be a merry 
one. 

The windows of the room to which you are shown 
are probably nailed up and were never intended to be 
opened. It is no joke to be thrust into an evil-smelling 
room, ten feet square, with a myriad of hungry flies, and 
the air of which has been boxed up since winter. The 
Russians thrive on this sort of thing, however, and one 
soon ceases to regard an over-crowded prison as a pun- 
ishment to the lower-class Russian. 

For travelers of suflicient importance, from a finan- 
cial point of view, however, the landlord readily vacates 
his private room and arranges a comfortable shake- 



66 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

down with hay and quilts. The rooms of the traktirs 
all contain from three to thirty ikons, and at the hotels a 
small ikon sometimes hangs on the head of the bed, to 
insure sound and peaceful repose to the occupant. 

The tipping nuisance is worse in Russian hotels 
than in any other country, not excepting even Egypt, 
the land of backsheesh. With few exceptions the 
hotel employees receive no compensation for their 
services beyond the offerings of the guests, and all tips 
are pooled and divided pro rata. Wealthy and open- 
handed Russians, dining at the big traktirs of St. 
Petersburg and Moscow, usually reckon to give the 
waiters one ruble for every five spent on a dinner. At 
the Hermitage Traktir, the finest restaurant in Mos- 
cow, wealthy and ostentatious merchants have been 
known to spend two hundred rubles on a dinner for 
two persons, and to tip the waiter with a couple of 
twenty-ruble notes. At the country hotels the em- 
ployees swarm about you like hungry rats as the time] 
arrives for your departure. People whom you have 
never set eyes on before, now present themselves with 
an awkward bow and with a look of eager expectancy 
that is positively embarrassing. 

Few things on earth are more delusive than a 
Russian country hotel. In the two capitals the influ- 
ence of Western European contact has brought about 
a better state of afTairs; but the bill of a Russian pro- 
vincial hostelry is a curiosity. We stayed over night 
at the Hotel London in the provincial capital of Tula. 
On calling for the bill in the morning, I learned for the 
first time that in engaging a room at the leading hotel 
in a Russian city you do not thereby always engage a 



THE START FROM MOSCOW. 67 

bed to sle^p in. Tlie bedstead is reckoned as part of 
the room, and is always there for you to look at and 
wonder why it contains no bed beyond a naked mat- 
tress. After tliinking it will be all right, till you are 
ready to retire, you ring for the chambermaid and 
mildly chide her for her forgetfulness. 

Sheets and pillows are brought at your command, 
and n^xt morning, on looking over the items of your 
bill, you perceive with astonishment that ''two sheets, 
two pillow-cases, one counterpane," etc., have been 
added to candles, matches, and other " extras" charged 
up to you. It is the custom in Russia for the traveler 
to carry with him his own bed-linen, pillows, towels, etc. 
CTiily Russians who have taken to the ways of Western 
travelers ever think of traveling without all these things. 
All that the hotel is expected to provide, and all that 
the hotel-keeper feels called upon to include with the 
room, is bedstead and mattress. The better-class Rus- 
sian is very much opposed to sleeping between sheets 
that have been used over and over again by the Lord 
knows who and how many passing travelers. The fact 
that they have been washed before being passed on to 
him makes no difference. His custom and the custom 
of his ancestors has been to carry his own bedclothes 
with him on his travels, and when some unforeseen cir- 
cumstances brings him to a hotel without them, his 
idea is to borrow a set for the night from the proprietor 
and pay whatever is charged for their use. 

In the court-\'<ir(l of the hotel or traktir are always 
from one to three or four savage dogs. They are of a 
shaggy, wolfish breed, and seem but half domesticated. 
Usually they are chained up with a long, heavy chain. 



68 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Why the chain is always long the owners of the dogs 
are unable to explain, beyond the fact that chains and 
custom are alike hereditary ; but the stranger who 
unwarily saunters into the yard and manages to hop 
beyond the danger circle by a few spasmodic jumps, as 
the dog springs at him, not unfrequently makes the 
mistake of jumping too far. A second wolf-fanged 
brute rushes at him from the other side, and, as he 
momentarily speculates on the chance of being torn 
down, a third tries to reach him from the body of the 
old sleigh toward which he has begun retreating. All 
three tug and struggle violently to break their tethers, 
and to menace them with stick or stone only serves to 
redouble their rage. The writer had a pair of trousers 
converted into material for the ragman by these sav- 
age sentinels, before we had been on the road a week, 
but no blood was spilled. After a couple of narrow 
escapes one becomes wary by instinct, and never enters 
a Russian court-yard without due precaution. 

Away from the railways, the traffic one sees on the 
Russian highways is a far better index to the state of 
the country and the condition of its people and insti- 
tutions than the mere tourist ever comes in contact 
with. Oar route was along the main road between 
Moscow, Kharkoff, Kief, and other Southern cities. 
As far as Kharkoff and Kief it is a very fair macadam 
road. The vehicles are peculiarly Russian, and a pic- 
turesque feature are the troikas, with three, and 
the tchetvarkas with four horses abreast ; the horses 
and the duga (the bow that connects the shafts) 
are hung with bells that jingle-jangle merrily as the 
teams sweep by at a smart gallop. 



THE START FROM MOSCOW. 69 

There is also the linega, an affair like the Irish 
jaunting car. The people sit back to back between, 
instead of over, the wheels, and the foot-board almost 
touches the ground. A large family or public linega 
carries as many as fourteen persons. 

A primitive drosky is also commonly met, a four- 
wheeled low vehicle, with driver and passengers be- 
striding a long cushioned plank, which connects the fore 
and hind wheels. The telegas, or common country 
wagons, are met in long strings, taking produce from 
remote parts of the country. Goods of certain kinds 
are still hauled into Moscow several hundred miles by 
the lumbering telegas from districts that are far from a 
railway. 

The Moscow-Kharkoff highway is a well-kept mac- 
adam with a reservation of greensward, forty feet wide 
on either side. On some of the communes through 
which the road passes the side reservations are rented 
from the government and preserved for hay ; on others 
are herds of hobbled horses, tended by men and boys, 
with dogs, and whips that are one of the curiosities of 
the road. These enormous lashes are twice as large as 
the largest bull-whacking whips of the old overland 
days in the West. 

It seemed to the writer rather picayunish, in a coun. 
try so prodigal of land as Russia, for the authorities to 
" rent " the grass on these two narrow strips of side-road. 
Our horses, which we usually rode over the sward, 
might fairly be said to have walked through clover the 
whole distance from Moscow ; yet we could not con- 
scientiously permit them to dip down and take a 
mouthful, for where the grass was fit for anything, 



70 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

every blade had been paid for by villagers, who 
could ill afford to giveaway even a bite of grass. The 
Imperial Russian Government considers it beneath its 
dignity to sell its superfluous parks and palaces, but be- 
fore the moujik may thrust his scythe into a bunch of 
grass growing on the big military road, which his taxes 
and his labor built and keep in repair, he has to pur- 
chase the privilege. 

This seems rather overdoing the thing, in a govern- 
ment that considers itself, first of all, "' paternal." 
That it fully deserves the name, however, in gen- 
eral, evidences were not wanting every hour of the 
day, as we rode along. On every house in the village 
is painted a rude picture of one or another household 
implement. On one is a bucket, a second a spade, a 
third an ax. These primitive hieroglyphics are the 
outward and visible signs of paternal forethought in 
the matter of fires. Every peasant is obliged by law 
to insure his house to the amount of seventy-five 
rubles. This costs two rubles a year. Beyond this he 
can insure to any amount. 

As a further safeguard, every village community is 
organized into a primitive fire-brigade, and the pictures 
on the houses indicate to the occupant what he is 
required to do in case of a fire breaking out in the 
village. The man on whose house is pictured an ax, 
is required to bring one of those tools ; a householder 
whose property is decorated with the sign of a bucket 
is to hurry to the scene of the conflagration prepared 
to carry water, etc. This is a primitive form of fire- 
brigade, suitable to the little clusters of log houses 
that pass for villages in Russia. 



i 



CHAPTER V. 

ON THE czar's HIGHWAY. 

ON Sunday, June 29, we crossed the River Moskvva, 
where it runs through the broad, fat lands of the 
Nicolai Oograshinsky Monastery, over a rickety pon- 
toon bridge, half-submerged. Bridges have, in Russia, 
an evil reputation among native travelers. The 
foreigner sees in them merely the possibility of broken 
bones, but to the native they are also the lurking- 
places of highway robbers. In troublous times and 
lawless districts, it is under the archways of the 
bridges that marauders hide, to pounce out upon pass- 
ing travelers. Many Russian travelers make a practice 
of crossing themselves at bridges, by way of commend- 
ing themselves to the special protection of Providence. 
This, I was told, is a relic of the old Tartar days, when 
the peasantry approached a bridge with fear and trem- 
bling, making signs of the Cross, lest it be the hiding- 
place of a band of marauding nomads. 

No danger of robbers at the bridge across the Mos- 
kwa, however, unless they might also be amphibians, 
capable of keeping their heads under water an indef- 
inite length of time. 

Texas, as before mentioned, had a truly Russian 
horror of bridges. Among his notions of a horse's 
rights, was the privilege of turning tail at all sorts and 

71 



72 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

conditions of bridges, whether safe or unsafe, large or 
small, wood, stone, or iron. The Nicolai Oograshinsky 
bridge consisted of planks that had once been spiked 
to a set of rafts, but which were now mostly loose. 
By dint of many cuts of the whip, and the assumption 
of a truly portentous attitude by his rider, Texas suf- 
fered himself to be urged a fourth of the way across, 
though starting with spasmodic fear at every step. 
Here, a viler spot than any brought him to a halt ; and 
when, prancing about under the goad of additional 
threats and coaxings, water squashed up between the 
loose planks and smote him under the belly, he gave 
way to an impulse of terror, and, whirling round, bolted 
for terra fir ma. 

Then ensued a comical battle between his fear of 
the bridge and his love of society. The other horses 
crossed and drew away in the distance. Texas 
neighed at them to come back, emphasizing the sum- 
mons by vigorously pawing the ground ; and at length, 
finding that no attention was paid to him, ventured 
across the bridge, and, demanding the rein, overtook 
them at a gallop. 

The Moskwa is a sluggish, meandering stream, and 
like all Russian rivers, save the Neva, several times 
larger in the spring and early summer than from June 
to winter. Wood, hay, and all manner of country pro- 
duce is towed along it in big barges to Moscow. The 
government attempts, in a desultory way, to improve 
its navigation by digging canals across its innumer- 
able horse-shoe bends, levying tolls on the barges 
to pay for the outlay. It is one of the minor streams 
of Russia, a tributary of the Oka, and is the cradle of 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 73 

the Muscovite Empire, and of the traditions that cen- 
ter around Moscow, which it gave birth to and nour- 
ished into a capital city. 

From the bluffs beyond the bridge could be obtained 
a splendid view of Moscow. Its many golden spires 
and domes glittered and twinkled in the sun like 
yellow stars, and the scene was as Oriental, on the 
whole, as anything the writer had seen anywhere in 
Asia. Even more than the tall minarets of the Stam- 
boul mosques, or the beautiful temples of the Hindoo 
gods at Benares, the twinkling beacons of the golden 
domes of Moscow the Holy, impressed one as the 
metropolis of a people's religion. Surely, those 
beacons indicated a harbor where all who wished 
might find comfort and repose of soul in the calm 
waters of the " Orthodox Church." If anything were 
wanting to complete the Eastern character of the scene, 
it was provided by a band of pilgrims, who were 
gathered on the bluff, touching their foreheads to the 
ground toward Moscow, and making the sign of the 
Cross. These were people, who had come on foot, in 
rags and begging their way, from the distant confines 
of the Empire, making a pilgrimage to the shrines of 
the Saints at Moscow. Four years before I had seen 
Persian devotees, on the hills near Meshed, bowing to 
the earth at their first glimpse of the golden dome of 
Imam Riza's Mosque ; vividly alike these two occasions 
seemed, — the yellow, twinkling domes and the bowing 
rapturous figures on the hills, — though one was a 
Christian, the other a Moslem scene. 

We rode through many small villages, devoted to the 
cultivation of cherries, currants, and other small fruits; 



74 THROUGH RUSSIA O.V A MUSTANG. 

and traversed for a few versts the road that Napoleon's 
army passed along after the evacuation of Moscow- 
Sascha and his brother, who rode with us that day, joked 
about Napoleon's discomfiture, and the devotion of the 
moujiks, who burned their produce rather than sell it to 
the French, much as though the whole affair were an 
occurrence of yesterday. 

The talk was of wolves and bears, as our road led us 
through tracts of wild forest. Some of the tracts are 
several thousand dessiatines in extent, and in the 
depths of these both wolves and bears remain all sum- 
mer. The wolves prey on the smaller animals ; the 
bears live on roots and berries. During the summer 
they are invisible, but in the winter hunger drives the 
wolves to come out and commit depredations on the 
sheep and cattle of the surrounding villages. Three or 
four pairs of wolves, that have managed to rear their 
young without molestation in the depths of the forest 
during the summer, muster a fair-sized hunting-pack 
by the following- winter. 

Bear-hunting is the most ambitious sport in Russia. 
Winter is the season of bruin's undoing, for, though 
he hibernates, the art of discovering his lurking-place 
has been reduced to a reasonable certainty by a num- 
ber of sturdy peasants, who devote their winters to 
finding bears and selling them to the sportsmen. 

When the ground is covered with several feet of 
snow, the village bear-finders scatter through the 
forests. The sleeping place of a bear is revealed by a 
hole in the snow made by his breath. The finder of a 
bear, taking sundry precautions to " prove his claim " 
should others come to the same spot after his depar^ 



OAT THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 75 

ture, hastens to notify a sportsman of his discovery. 
He offers to sell the bear, much as if he had it in a sack, 
safely secured ; with the understanding, however, that 
if bruin should have sniffed danger, and made off before 
he takes the sportsman to the spot, the bargain be- 
comes null and void. 

The usual price demanded for a bear is a hundred 
rubles. He is actually sold in his lair, and the peas- 
ant's services consist in guiding the sportsman to the 
i spot and pointing out the breath-hole in the snow. 
Whether the sportsman succeeds in bagging the bear 
or not, — that, of course, being no fault of the peas- 
ant's, — he pays the price agreed upon. Many sports- 
men have a standing agreement with the bear-finders 
of the surrounding district, that he is to have the 
option on any finds they make. And when a sports- 
man has earned a reputation among the peasants as a 
dead shot, they often prefer to sell the bears to him by 
weight, bargaining for so much per pound instead of a 
lump sum. 

This is, in fact, the method preferred by old bear- 
finders, who have by long experience learned to judge 
of the bear's size by the dimensions of the hole in the 
snow. They shrewdly take advantage of their superior 
bear-craft to drive a sharp bargain at the expense of 
the city sportsman, selling the bear for a specific sum 
of money if they think the find a small animal, and by 
the pound if the hole indicates a big one. 

When the writer was at Count Tolstoi's, the famous 
author showed me the scars of an old scalp-wound that 
had been inflicted by a bear. In his ante-literary days 
the Count was very fond of bear-hunting, and, on 



7 6 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A iM US TA NG. 

the occasion to which the scars bear reference, a 
wounded bear came perilously near cheating the world 
out of "War and Peace," " My Religion," and other of 
the Count's productions that we could ill afTord to be 
without. He owed his life to the presence of mind of 
his brother, who was hunting with him. Tolstoi had 
shot at bruin twice, wounding him both times without 
disabling him ; and in return the bear had knocked 
him down in the snow and was standing over him, when 
the brother rushed up and put a bullet in its brain. 

From bruin to Briton may, or may not be much of 
a digression, depending, of course, on the nature of 
the Briton in the case. For the sake of continuity, 
moreover, even more startling associations than these 
two may be permitted to the chronicler of a journey. 
It is well, however, when abrupt transitions of this 
nature occur, if one is able to disarm English suscep- 
tibility by introducing, after treating of bears, a gentle- 
man as unlike* one of those animals as it is possible for 
a human being to be. 

We spent the heat of the day at the hospitable 
datscha of Mr. Hamson, a cotton mill-owner of Tzaritza. 
Mr. Hamson is a fair specimen of a type of English- 
men one occasionally comes upon in Russia. He was 
born in the country, of parents who had gone to 
Russia and started cotton mills fifty years before. 
Others went as managers in Russian mills, and in the 
course of time became partners and proprietors. 

You see unmistakable English and Scotch faces 
among ofificers of the army and navy, and in centers 
of mining, manufacturing, and shipping industries. 
These are the descendants of Englishmen who flocked 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 77 

to Russia during the reign of Peter the Great to take 
service under him, and for various enterprises since. 
They take pride in being of Engli -h origin, though it 
may be but a family tradition among them. You can 
offer no more acceptable piece of flattery to the lady 
members of one of these Anglo-Russian families than 
to compliment them with having the English type 
of face. On one occasion I overlooked this delicate 
point, until reminded of the negligence by one of the 
ladies* who affected surprise that I hadn't mistaken 
her for an Englishwoman, on account of her face. Her 
father's grandfather or great-grandfather had come from 
England some time in the eighteenth century. 

In St. Petersburg, army officers with English blood in 
their veins affect dinners at the Hotel d'Angleterre, 
where you may see typical English faces under the 
Russian military visors, or even in the incongruous 
setting of a Circassian officer's costume. Nearly every 
day, when the writer was at this hotel, a guardsman 
and a Circassian, both officers, used to come to lunch 
together at noon ; as typical a pair of English faces as 
could be found in all Britain. 

Many will be astonished, as I was, to learn that in 
St. Petersburg, alone, are more than ten thousand 
English, nearly all of whom are British subjects. The 
majority of them are connected with the shipping and 
m:inufacturing interests in and about Petersburg. 

Englishmen who become, as it were, isolated in the 
provinces, soon lose interest in the doings of the outer 
world, and surprise a passing countryman, who drops 
in on them, by their ignorance of current events be- 
yond the Russian border. In this respect, the disrepu- 



7 8 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TANG. 

table press censorship tends to drag them rapidly down 
to the level of the people among whom they have cast 
their lot. From the Russian newspapers they learn 
nothing but what a suspicious and tyrannical govern- 
ment permits the people to know, and in order to keep 
on good terms with the authorities it is advisable to 
receive no foreign publications whatever. It seemed 
curious to meet intelligent and well-educated English- 
men, like Mr. Hamson, who had never heard of what 
the foreign press was full of at the time of mj^ visit, 
the Century s exposition of the evils of the exile sys- 
tem of Siberia. And it sounded even comical to hear 
him ask if it were true that '* at the Penjdeh affair the 
English officers had run away ! " Such, it seems, is 
the story as it had been permitted to circulate in 
Russia; where the truth in regard to such matters is 
never allowed to be published. 

On the subject of cotton-spinning our host was 
more at home. Tariffs were high, he said, yet* they 
couldn't compete with English manufacturers, owing 
to the incompetence of Russian workmen and the 
higher rate of interest on capital in Russia. In Russia, 
capital was worth eight per cent., in England, three ; 
and a Lancashire weaver was as far ahead of a Russian 
factory hand " as a race horse was ahead of a donkey." 
The Manchester man, he reckoned, would do the work 
of six to eight moujiks. 

A great future was looked forward to, however, in 
cotton production and spinning. Everything possible is 
being done to promote the cotton growing industry of 
Russia's Central Asian possessions. American cotton- 
gins were being shipped to Samarkand by the dozen, 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 79 

and Americans had been employed by the government 
to proceed thither and instruct the people in improved 
methods of cultivation. The dream of Russian states- 
men is to see the Trans-Caspian and Lower Volga 
regions develop into manufacturing districts that shall 
eventually supply all Russia with cotton goods. The 
idea is, that when Russia is able to manufacture suffi- 
cient for her own people, to keep foreign goods out of 
the market altogether by means of a prohibitory tariff. 
Cheap clothing, for the welfare of the masses, is of 
course, not for a moment to be considered in a country 
where the interests of the people are always made 
subservient to that of the state. 

We spent Sunday night at a dirty traktir in Podolsk. 
Wayfarers, other than tramps and pilgrims, were 
mostly moujik teamsters, whose idea of cleanliness and 
comfort are on a par with those of the American 
Indian. The Podolsk traktir contained no bed for 
transient guests but the bare floor, which, however, 
the proprietor did something to improve by means of 
an armful of spiky hay. Sascha had his Cossack 
bourka, an ample cloak of goat-hair, and the writer had 
an English rug. With these spread over the hay, and 
the cushions of our Circassian saddles for pillows, our 
beds were at least as good as our supper of milk, black 
bread, and tiny raw salt fishes. 

A dozen drunken moujiks, in an adjoining room, 
added to the sum of our appreciation by howling 
bacchanalian songs and arguing with each other 
violently till past midnight. Drunken peasants were 
an every-day feature of the road, as we pursued our 
way along the great military cJiaussc'c. Whether we 



8o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

halted for refreshments at a traktir, morning, noon, or 
night, maudlin moujiks drinking vodka, or having 
drunk all they could get, quarreling with the landlord 
because he wouldn't trust them for yet more, were 
sure to figure in the by no means attractive picture 
of Russian village life. In other countries, where 
drunkenness prevails among the lower orders, it is in 
the evening when most of the drinking is done, and a 
drunken man is rarely seen in the morning. Morning 
drunkenness impressed me, early on the ride, as being 
one of the national peculiarities of the Russians, 
though it would, doubtless, be more correct to say that 
it is one of the characteristics of the uncivilized boozer, 
that distinguishes him from his brother inebriates of 
more civilized, and consequently more regular habits. 
The lot of the Russian peasant is hard in many respects, 
but much of his burden of woe comes from his inability 
to resist the doubtful allurements of King Vodka. 
Without any brains to spare from his scanty equip- 
ment for the battle of life, his daily concern is to 
obtain the wherewithal to pour down his throat and 
steal away what little he has. Whether he is to be 
pitied more than blamed is a question that is appli- 
cable to individuals rather than to the moujiks as a 
class. The hopelessness of the outlook ahead of them, 
and what must seem, to the vast majority of them, the 
uselessness of attempting to better their condition in 
life, is, no doubt, largely responsible for the moral 
degradation of the Russian peasantry. 

Indeed, it is hardly necessary to go to Russia for 
examples of men *' driven to drink" for the want of 
opportunities to better their condition, though there 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 8i 

is a limpness and a streak of recklessness in the 
Russian character that makes for moral surrender in 
the face of difficulties that the Teuton or the Anglo- 
Saxon would stand up to and attempt to overcome. 

Undoubtedly the lower strata of the Russian popu- 
lation are the drunkenest people under the sun. Look- 
ing back over our road, as the thought occurs to me, I 
remember no village in which drunken people were not 
very much in evidence. At every wayside traktir 
where we stayed over night, the forepart of the night 
v/ould be more or less of a pandemonium from the 
shouting and singing of roystering moujiks filled with 
vodka. I have seen gangs of gray-haired old men, see- 
sawing, flinging their arms about, and making fools of 
themselves generally, in the sight of the whole village, 
yet not attracting to themselves so much as the curious 
or reproachful gaze of a single woman. 

On Sunday all the men seemed to be drinking and 
carousing, and all the women were sitting in little cir- 
cles in front of the houses gossiping. The one sex 
seemed to be absolutely oblivious of the proceedings 
or even the presence of the other. The drunkenness 
was sad enough, but the indifference of the women to 
it was the saddest of all. 

Sometimes, but not often, were drunken women. 
Near one village we met a crowd of drunken men and 
women, as merry and picturesque a set of subjects as 
Bacchus himself could wish. Hand in hand they reeled 
along and sang ; now and then they stopped to dance 
and to express their joy in wild laughter. They halted 
and sung for us a melodious bacchanalian song, well 
worth listening to, as we rode past. The men were in 



8 2 THR UGH R VSSIA ON A iM US TA NG. 

red shirts, black velvet trousers, and top boots. The 
women were in all the colors of the rainbow, with red 
well in the ascendency. Arriving at a little old, dilapi- 
dated ikon by the wayside, the merry-makers, one and 
all, removed their caps and crossed themselves de- 
voutly, then, proceeding on their way, struck up another 
bacchanalian refrain. 

Soon we reached the groggery. It was a cheap log 
house, roofed with tin, and with a little porch at the 
door. On the porch stood an old moujik with a gal- 
lon demijohn of vodka, from which he was filling glasses 
holding about a third of a pint. He seemed to be 
treating the crowd. One of these portions costs fif- 
teen kopecks, or about eight cents. The best vodka is 
made from rye, the worst from potatoes. A moujik 
can get howling drunk for fifteen cents. 

On Sundays and holy days the vodka shop is the 
rallying point of the male population. His rags may 
be insufficient to cover his nakedness, his house may be 
tumbling about his head, his family may be upon the 
verge of starvation, but the improvident moujik hands 
out his last kopeck for vodka, then runs in debt. He 
pledges his growing crops, his horse, his only cow, 
engages his labor in advance at a ruinous discount. 
He becomes insolvent, and is unable to pay his share of 
the mir's taxes. 

But the moujik is not the only member of Russian 
society who contributes to the enormous revenue de- 
rived from the sale and consumption of vodka. 
Curious as it may seem to American readers, the Rus- 
sian priests are notorious boozers. A village priest 
may get drunk as often as he pleases, and by so doing 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 83 

does not forfeit the respect of his parishioners. It is 
no uncommon thing, so I was told, for a priest to drink 
himself into a state of beastly intoxication. And the 
" black clergy," the monks who spin out an indolent 
existence in the five hundred monasteries of the Em- 
pire, drink brandy out of beer glasses. 

But do not imagine that all Russia is shocked at 
this consumption of spirits by its priesthood — these 
" carryings-on," as we should call it. Nothing of the 
kind. The relations of priest and people in Russia 
are curious to the Protestant mind. The Russian 
is devoted to the Church, and demands of his priest 
that he be able to perform the rituals. Whether 
the priest is of a good moral character or the reverse 
has little weight with the worshipers. To them he is 
merely the automatic human machine, a necessary ad- 
junct to the Church, to swing the censer and marry 
them, and say masses for them and bury them. He 
seldom attempts to influence their moral character, and 
they hold him in no sort of respect. As to vodka, if 
they trouble themselves about it at all it is to envy him 
his ability to purchase enough to get drunk on oftener 
than they themselves can afford to. 

That vodka drinking is at the root of half the misery 
one sees in Russia, I was quickly persuaded. The evil 
is enormous, but the remedy is not so easily found. 
The revenues are correspondingly enormous, and the 
universal adoption of temperance by the peasantry 
would probably bankrupt the government. The reve- 
nues from vodka are said to pay the expenses of both 
army and navy. 

A drunken moujik is a maudlin, funny creature. 



84 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

He is recognized by all classes as primarily a lover of 
vodka and the music of the accordion. The toy 
moLijik in the shops of Moscow and St. Petersburg 
always represents a drunken man with a bottle or an 
accordion. In groups, his wife is trying to pick him 
up from the ground. 

On Tuesday night we put up at the house of a 
thrifty moujik in the mir of Volosovo. His was an 
ideal peasant family household, and Volosovo came 
near being an ideal mir. The ideal mir is one of the 
happiest arrangements imaginable for the people of the 
mental attainments and social disposition of the Rus- 
sian moujik. Unfortunately, the real state of affairs 
comes far short, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
of the ideal, even as we found it in Volosovo. 

The household I speak of consisted of an ancient 
moujik, more than eighty years old, — who remembered 
Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, — and three robust 
sons with their families. The house sheltered about 
eighteen persons. All three of the sons could read 
and write. I had noticed, when riding through Volo- 
sovo, that the houses were neater and better, and that 
the whole appearance of the place seemed more pros- 
perous than otiier villages we had passed through. 
We inquired the reason. '* It is because there is no 
vodka shop in the mir," was the answer. 

We entered into conversation on the subject of the 
moujiks and their condition. Our hosts vied with each 
other in giving information. Were the moujiks better 
off since the emancipation than before ? 

" Some of them are, and others are not," was the 
reply. *' Everything depends on the man himself. 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 85 

There is no reason why all should not be much better 
off. Vodka was the only trouble. A moujik who 
kept away from the vodka shop and tended to his land 
and his work was infinitely better oiT than when he 
was a serf. For the man who cared for nothing but 
drink and neglected his family, serfage and the mas- 
ter's stick were better than freedom. 

** The secret of the prosperity of Volosovo is that we 
voted to have no vodka shop in the mir — that, and 
nothing else. Every mir has the privilege of local 
option. (Since this was written, local option has been 
taken away.) It remains with the people themselves 
whether they shall admit a vodka seller to their midst 
or not. Vodka sellers get into the mirs by bribery, 
and by paying a good share of the taxes. A vodka 
seller will, perhaps, engage to pay five hundred rubles 
of the mir's taxes, which, let us say, amounts to one 
tenth of the whole. Tiiis being agreed to, the liquor 
shop is opened, the moujiks spend everything in drink, 
and the entire mir is demoralized. The vodka seller 
takes twenty rubles out of every moujik's pocket ; in 
return fo'r which he pays twenty kopecks back in the 
guise of taxes. Now, in Volosovo we decided to keep 
our twenty rubles and pay our twenty kopecks taxes 
ourselves, and so, at the end of the year, we find our- 
selves nineteen rubles and eighty kopecks in pocket." 

Thus far, my informant said, the government had 
been inclined to deal leniently with the moujik. If 
unable to pay his direct taxes, it was because he had 
drank vodka, and had thereby paid thern, several times 
over, indirectly. So reasoned a paternal government 
that had delivered him from serfdom — a weakling to 



86 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG, 

be nursed and borne with patiently. So had it borne 
with him for twenty-nine years, wavering between the 
duty of teaching him the lesson of a little self-reliance, 
b\' hard experience, and a reluctance to resort to ex- 
tremes. Beginning with that year (1890), however, the 
moujik who failed to pay his taxes was to be flogged. 
From twenty to thirty stripes might be administered, 
and a fine of five kopecks added with every stroke. 

Every mile of the way from Moscow the baleful 
effects of vodka drinking had thrust itself into our 
notice, and we asked our hosts why the Russian priests, 
like the priests of other countries, didn't exert them- 
selves in the cause of temperance. The mass of the 
Russian population are swayed by the sentiments of 
devotion to the Church and its precepts. Two days 
out of every week, the whole of the seven weeks of 
Lent, three weeks in June, from the beginning of 
November till Christmas, or about seven months out 
of the twelve, the ignorant and reverential moujik 
starves his long-suffering stomach at the bidding of the 
Church. During all that time he denies himself even 
eggs and milk, nor deems the condition of his"spiritual 
well-being hard. But though the Church would re- 
buke him for swallowing a glass of milk in fast time, it 
says not a word against, but rather encourages, the 
swallowing of an inordinate quantity of the fiery and 
biting vodka. 

" Why this state of affairs ? " we asked. 

The devotion of the answer was almost pathetic. 
" It is bad for the people to drink vodka ; but what 
would the Czar do without the taxes on its consump- 
tion ? " they replied. 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 87 

It was bad for the moujiks to ruin themselves, 
but for the sake of the Czar all things must be en- 
dured ! 

On Thursday we arrived at Tula. Tula is a city of 
about 90,000 inhabitants, two hundred versts south 
of Moscow. It is the capital of the province of the 
same name, and has been famous since the time of 
Peter the Great for the manufacture of small arms. 
Its chief reputation, however, rests on the manufacture 
of samovars and accordions. In every house and 
palace, and in every peasant's hut throughout the vast 
extent of the Russian Empire, is found a brass 
samovar, or tea-urn. These are largely made at Tula. 

Like caviare and vodka, the samovar is peculiarly 
Russian. So excellent a household god, however, will 
not always be confined to one country and people, 
however large the one or numerous the other. Its use 
is spreading to all tea-drinking countries. To every 
post-station, and to the house of every well-to-do Khan 
in Persia, the Russian samovar has already made its 
way, and not a few of the readers of these pages have 
become familiar with its appearance. 

But Tula and its output of samovars, accordions, 
swords, rifles, and revolvers was interesting to the 
writer chiefly as the first stage of the equestrian 
journey from Moscow to the Crimea. After a five day 
ride we arrived here, men and horses in good trim. I 
had no intention of riding against time, but to jog 
along twenty-five to thirty miles a day, keeping well 
within the capacity of our horses. 

As before stated, while the ride would be interest- 
ing as a performance on horseback, the principal mo- 



^8 'rjJA\)UUJ/ A'L'SS/.! ON A MUSTANG. 

tive of the joiirno}' was to study the countr\- and 
people. It w <is in order to do this to the best advan- 
tage that I took Saseha Kritsch, the young Moscow 
student, to interpret and exphiin as we rode along 
from day to day. In the writer's opinion there is no 
better way to study a country than to make a tour on 
horseback or bic3'cle. with an educated and communi- 
cative )outh, from among its inhabitants, for a com- 
panitui. 

Thus far our ride had been chiefly, like the famous 
maneuvers of the Duke of York, up hill and down. 
Had that old martinet been in this part of Russia with 
his 10,000 men, he migl>t have " marched them up the 
hill, then down again," all da)- long, by simply follow- 
ing the military road between Moscow and Tula. The 
countrx^ resembles the rolling prairies of southwestern 
Iowa, but the land is poor. Fields of rye, oats, and 
potatoes alternate w^ith primeval or artificial forests. 
We saw^ not a field of wheat between Moscow and 
Tula; the soil is not rich enough to produce it to ad- 
v^antage. The system of agriculture followed is known 
as the *' three-field S3'stem," by which every field gets 
three years' rest after six of cultivation. 

We talked of the celebrated black earth country, 
where there would be wheat, wheat, wheat — nothing 
but wheat. The change would not be agreeable, I 
imagined, except for the interesting characteristics of 
the Little Russians, its inhabitants. An ocean of wav- 
ing wheat fields is an interesting sight to gaze upon, 
but soon grows monotonous. Here the monotonous 
character of the countr\' was relieved b\' the alternate 
lights and shadows of field and forest. Imagine a 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 89 

rolling country, half forest and half fields of tall, ripen- 
ing rye, from the ridges of which are always visible from 
three to a dozen little clusters of peasants' houses, and 
through which the broad government road cuts a wide 
swath, and you have the landscape of central Russia, in 
June, before you. 

You have seen it at its best. What it is like in 
winter, when the forests are bare, the fields a waste 
of snow, and the red-shirted moujiks asleep on their 
stoves, can be readily imagined. Even in the holiday 
garb of June there is a tameness and a sameness in the 
beauty of the landscape that rob it of half its charms. 
One longs for a valley or a mountain, and I was con- 
stantly reminded by the observations of my companion, 
that for thousands of square versts, in any direction 
from Moscow, there is the same dearth of variety. 
A gully a hundred feet deep, or a ridge a couple of 
hundred feet high, stirred the adventurous soul of 
Sascha into an expression of wondering delight. Nor 
could he quite understand why it was that I viewed 
these trifling variations of the earth's surface without 
emotion. 

The country passed through sustains a population of 
forty-five to the square verst. Villages were small, but 
numerous. We rode through no less than fifty-seven 
villages, a village for every three and a half versts. 
They seemed about as thick off the main road as on it. 
A village usually consists of two rows of log houses, 
straggling disjointedly along either side of the road. 
Nine tenths of the houses are unpainted log cabins, 
thatched with straw ; the tenth would be roofed with 
tin, and with the house painted red and the roof green. 



90 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Some of my readers, though not all, will be surprised 
to learn that each of these villages is a tiny repubh'c, 
and that the real Russia, the Russia that I am endeav- 
oring to investigate and explain, consists of hundreds 
of thousands of these miniature peasant republics, to 
the members of which St. Petersburg is as remote as 
the heavens, and* the Czar a demi-god, as infallible as 
Jove. These village communities are known as mirs 
(meers), and their number in all Russia is somewhere 
near a half million. 

A mir consists of a cluster of peasant families, and 
the land allotted by the government for their support. 
In Russia are no separate farmsteads, as the term is 
understood in America. Sometimes, on the outskirts 
of a village, in the most picturesque situation round 
about, we saw pretty villas, as superior to the dwellings 
of the moujiks as heaven is superior to the earth. 
They were not the dwellings of peasants, however, but 
the " datschas," or- country residences, of rich city 
merchants, or the owners of large estates. The mos- 
jik never isolates his house after the manner of the 
United States farmer. The inhabitants of the mirs are 
all clustered together in villages. Usually a dwelling 
consists of a four-square building, inclosing a court- 
yard. One side of the square is the house and the 
other three sheds. 

In 1861, when the serfs were emancipated by Alex- 
ander II., three and a half dessiatines, in certain dis- 
tricts more in others less (two and a half acres to a 
dessiatine), of land were allotted to each liberated 
" soul," or head of a family. At the entrance to a 
village may be seen a sign-post, stating the number 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 91 

of souls and the number of houses in the com- 
munity. 

To the St. Petersburg government the mir is an ad- 
ministrative and financial unit. Instead of collecting 
taxes directly from the individual, the government 
collects them from the mir. The mir, not the indi- 
vidual, is assessed ; and if the community contains one 
or fifty ''souls," incapable of meeting their obligation, 
the burden of their delinquency has to be borne by 
their neighbors. The taxes are collected by the sta- 
rosta, or mayor, of the mir, and paid over by him to an 
agent of the provincial government. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 

ON Friday, July 4, our road from Tula led through 
Yasnia Polyana, the ancestral estate of Count Leo 
N. Tolstoi, the novelist. We had ridden out to Tula 
that morning, and striking the great Moscow-Kharkoff 
highway, turned our horses' heads toward the south. 
For some distance our road cut a swath through a 
magnificent forest. A stone pillar, surmounted by the 
imperial arms of Russia, told us that it was govern- 
ment property. We turned to the left, and a short 
distance from the road we came to a pair of circular 
pillars at the end of an avenue. It was the entrance 
to the Tolstoi estate. Both pillars and avenue seemed 
sadly neglected, to one accustomed to the neatness of 
England and America. The former were in decay, and 
the latter was overgrown with weeds and vagabond 
tree shoots. We seemed to be entering the domain of 
fallen grandeur rather than the abode of Russia's 
greatest and best known novelist. 

On the plastered wall of a tumble-down little lodge, 
near the pillars, was chalked, in Russian, "Come to 
the house." We rode up the avenue to the house. 
It is a white two-story structure of stone and wood — a 
roomy, though unpretentious abode. The only striking 
feature about it was a very broad veranda, with rude 
carvings of horses and birds on the railings. It was 

92 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 93 

six o'clock in the evening, and on the portico sat the 
Countess and several young ladies. The Countess was 
doing the honors behind the samovar, and the party 
were regaling themselves with tea and strawberries. 
The author sent in his card. Our horses were taken 
to the stables, and in five minutes we were of the 
interesting party about the samovar. Beside the 
Countess were the eldest daughter, the Countess's 
sister, two nieces from St. Petersburg, and two or three 
others. 

" The Count has been mowing hay this after- 
noon," said the Countess, *' and has not yet come in. 
I have sent him your card. He will be here in a 
minute." 

Every person at the table could speak English, some 
of the young ladies so fluently that it was difficult to 
believe they had not been born and brought up in an 
English-speaking community. 

Presently there appeared on the steps of the portico 
a thin, sun-browned man of medium height, clad in a 
coarse linen suit. His bushy eyebrows thatched a pair 
of kindly yet shrewd blue eyes, and his gray beard and 
long gray hair looked like a peasant's. A cheap home- 
made cap, of the same material as his suit, adorned the 
head to which the world is indebted for *' War and 
Peace," " Anna Karenina," and other masterpieces of 
the Russian realistic school. Rude boots, as ungainly 
as the wooden shoes of Germany, attested mutely to 
the eminent novelist's skill — or lack of it — as a cobbler. 
Both cap and boots were the Count's own handiwork. 
The linen trousers were loose and the shirt looser. 
The latter was worn, moujik fashion, outside the 



J 



94 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

trousers, and was gathered about the waist with a belt 
of russet leather. 

" I am very happy to see you," said Count Tolstoi, 
cheerily. '' I hope you will stay some days. We have 
had American visitors occasionally ; you are, I see, 
from New York." 

" We are riding from Moscow to the Crimea," I 
said, " and, of course, couldn't think of passing without 
calling to pay our respects." 

The Count looked thin and worn from a recent ill- 
ness, but said he was now in good health. He was 
taking a season of '' koumiss cure." At Samara, on 
the Volga, is an establishment for the manufacture of 
koumiss, to which the invalids of Russia resort. Count 
Tolstoi did not care to spend the summer at Samara, 
so he had set up a little koumiss establishment of his 
own. 

*' Come and see it," he said, *' and take my koumiss. 
I have been mowing hay. I must now drink koumiss. 
I drink it six times a day, and take nothing else but a 
little soup or tea." 

At the end of another short avenue, we came to a 
round wattle hut with a conical roof. It was a nomad 
aoul, or tent, of the steppes, improvised out of the best 
material at hand instead of the felt matting of the 
tribes in their own homes. Three yourg colts were 
tethered to a rope outside, and three big, fine brood- 
mares, their dams, were grazing in the orchard. 

A family of Bashkirs occupied the aoul — husband, 
wife, and two small children. They had been obtained 
from the koumiss establishments of Samara and brought 
to Yasnia Polyana, The three rnares each gave about 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 95 

a gallon of milk a day, the Count explained, and the 
foals were allowed to run with them at night. They 
were milked several times a day, and gave a pint at 
each milking. 

Inside' the aoul the Bashkir woman was plying a 
dasher in a horse-hide churn of milk. A big jar of kou- 
miss stood on a table. The Count poured some into a 
wooden bowl. 

" See how you like it," he said. 

It tasted very much like buttermilk, and betrayed 
to the palate no suggestion of alcohol. 

" I thought it had to be fermented," I said. 

" It is fermented," returned the Count, " and if a 
man were to drink enouorh of it he would feel it g^o to 
the head." 

" And so you have been mowing hay. You do not, 
then, like Mr. Gladstone, confine yourself to one form 
of manual exertion ?" 

Tolstoi' is an admirer of Mr. Gladstone, but freely 
criticised the motive of that statesman in chopping 
down trees as compared with his own ideas of why 
everybody should work. He had nothing to say 
against Mr. Gladstone felling trees, but thought it 
would be better were he to ply his ax for less selfish 
reasons than to exercise his body and maintain his 
health. Mr. Gladstone should wield his ax, if he pre- 
fers to chop down trees rather than to dig potatoes 
or mow hay, not merely for the same reason that an 
athlete goes to the gymnasium, but to earn his living. 

'* Every man," said the novelist, " ought to do 
enough work each day to pay for the food he eats 
and the clothes he wears. Unless he does that he is 



96 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

sponging his living off the labor of other people, and 
is doing an injustice to his fellow-men. Some days I 
mow, others I sow grain, plow, dig in the garden, 
pick berries or apples, or, like Mr. Gladstone, fell 'a 
tree. I live very simply. I make my own boots, and 
if my women would let me, would also make all my 
own clothes. I do not have to work very long hours 
to pay for what I consume, and so I find plenty of 
time to write and study. I am only sixty-two years 
old, and intend to write a great deal. My only con- 
cern is that life may prove too short to enable me to 
finish all I wish to do." 

" What particular literary work have you in con- 
templatation ? " 

'' Oh, I have many things ! My future works will be 
on educational rather than on purely social matters." 

** Will you advocate a new system of education, or 
only suggest improvements in the present methods?" 

*' The present system is all wrong," replied the 
Count. "The foundation of the system which I shall 
advocate will be the purity and perfection of the 
parents. In the shadow of paternal perfection the 
boys will ?\ttain perfection, and the purity and good- 
ness of the mothers will be transmitted to the girls. 
This will be the foundation of a better system of rear- 
ing and educating children than the world has yet seen. 
The present system is full of evils. People have be- 
come so used to evils tbat they are no longer capable 
of distinguishing the evil from the good. Or, if they 
recognize an evil, they have been used to it so long 
that they have lost the sense of proportion, and it 
seems to them less real and grievous than it is. I hope 



WITH COUNT TOLSl'OI. 97 

to expose the evils of the present system and to point 
out the way to a better order of things all round." 

I asked the Count when he expected to bring out 
his first work on education. He could not say, he re- 
plied. Possibly it would not appear during his life- 
time. All would depend on circumstances. Tolstoi' 
thinks it would be a good thing if every author would 
pigeon-hole his manuscripts and publish nothing during 
his life. 

" Then," said he, " there would be less printed paper 
in the world, and people would find time for reading 
what was really good." 

No author, he argued, ought to receive any compen- 
sation for his work, either in money or fame. His 
reward should be the satisfaction of having done, or 
having tried to do, something for the improvement of 
his fellows. He has never villingly seen any of his 
work go to the publishers, but has always yielded to the 
importunities and wishes of his friends. His''Kreut- 
zer Sonata," he said, was an unfinished work, and was 
not intended by him to be published in its present 
form. But his friends took it, and against his better 
judgment it was given to the world. He was then 
preparing the epilogue to it that shortly afterward 
appeared. He was also writing a treatise on intem- 
perance, setting forth his ideas regarding tobacco, 
alcohol, opium, hasheesh, rich food, romantic love, and 
various other indulgences that come under the ban of 
his creed. 

We talked of Siberia, and of the methods of the 
Russian government. Tolstoi' said, '' The government 
is altogether bad. It is a monument of superstition and 



9^ THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

injustice. As for himself, he went on in the even 
tenor of his \vay, doing whatever his conscience 
approved of, regardless of laws and governments. 
They usually let him alone, but collisions sometimes 
occur. The previous winter his eldest daughter had 
opened a school for the children on the estate. The 
village pope (priest) sent a memorial to the government 
asserting that the instruction given in the school was 
not orthodox. The Governor of Tula, Tolstoi's per- 
sonal friend, was obliged to come down to Yasnia Po- 
lyana and order the school closed. The winter was 
then about over, and the children had to go to work in 
the fields anyhow, so not much harm Avas done. His 
daughter intended to open the school again, however, 
the following winter, and to reopen it as often as the 
authorities might close it up. So, unless they tore it 
down, stationed a policeman at the door, or exiled the 
daughter, the school would be carried on. 

" The government sins most against the people in the 
matter of education. None of the concessions it makes 
are of any value. They are only makeshifts. Schools 
are in every village, but nothing is taught but * non- 
sensical catechism 'and the * three R's.' Yet, with the 
government restrictions dragging on the heels of the 
people, a great improvement had taken place since the 
emancipation of the serfs. It is now possible for ever}' 
peasant to learn to read and write. All the people 
need, to make themselves heard, is a free rein to learn 
what they choose," continued Tolstoi. 

The Count called to him a bright little peasant girl, 
in a blaze of red clothes. " Look here," he said, "how 
intelligent these children are. The moujik children are 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 99 

always brighter than ours, brighter than the children 
of the rich and noble, up to a certain age. My daughter 
pfoved that last winter, and it is a fact well known to all 
of us. But after ten or twelve years they begin to get 
dull and fall behind. It's the hard life and the drudgery 
of toiling in the fields." 

We talked of Africa and its people, the Count hav- 
ing heard of my adventures there the year before. He 
listened with intense interest as I told him that among 
the uncivilized Africans, as well as the moujiks of Rus- 
sia, the children were brighter tlian the grown people. 

I intended to send the Count a copy of " Looking 
Backward " that I had in Moscow. He had already 
read it. He didn't know whether the government per- 
mitted it to circulate in Russia, but he had received a 
copy through a friend. The story was very well told, 
he said, but that was all he could say for it. 

*' To be of value, the book should have shown how 
the results which are portrayed were to be arrived at. 
Without that * Looking Backward ' was nothing but a 
fairy tale. Then, men should live a life as happy and 
perfect as that which Mr. Bellamy describes, of their 
own free will and spontaneous goodness, and not re- 
quire government regulation for all their actions." 

Of the governments of the present day Tolstoi thinks 
the United States government a long way ahead. It 
is almost a mistake, he said, to call it a "" government " 
at all in the general acceptation of theterm. Certainly, 
it was not to be thought of as a " republic " in the 
sense that France is a republic. The French govern- 
ment is a *' republican form of government " : the peo- 
ple of the United States have a "■ natural govern- 



lOO THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

ment " — they govern themselves. A people who are 
simply living under a *' republican form of government," 
because they think it better than any other, may pos- 
sibly change their minds in time of some great public 
excitement and think that a king or an emperor would 
be better after all, but no such change is possible where 
the government is really, and truly a government of the 
people — " natural government." 

We stayed all night, and the next morning the Count 
and the writer took a long stroll about the estate. On 
our return three pilgrims were standing outside the 
house waiting for alms. On the roads of Russia one 
meets every hour of the summer day little bands of 
ragged, sunburned men or women, toiling wearily along 
or sitting down resting by the way. These are people 
making pilgrimages to Moscow or Kief, as good Mus- 
sulmans make pilgrimages to Mecca or Medina. 

The three specimens who appeared at Tolstoi's were 
uncouth members of the species ; their faces were a 
dirty yellow, their hair and beards were all over their 
faces and shoulders, and their garments w^ere a mass of 
rags and dirt. We came up to them, and the Count 
stood looking at them for a minute with a smile of ad- 
miration. Then, with a sweep of the hand, such as an 
artist might make toward some long-worshiped master- 
piece of art, " I like very much these people," he 
said. 

He ordered a servant to give each of them a coin, 
and then questioned them. One of the men, he ex- 
plained, was very well off and owned a large farm near 
Kief. The life the pilgrims lead was his ideal of a per- 
fectly happy, peaceful existence. The only lamentable 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. lOI 

thing about them was their superstition. They were 
not influenced by correct motives. They beheved that 
there was virtue in visiting the ikons at Moscow or 
Kief ; whereas the real virtue of their condition was 
that, in imitation of the Saviour, they were not afraid to 
start out on their long pilgrimages without so much as 
a single kopeck in their purses. This man, who owned 
a farm, had actually started out without a piece of 
money. The Count said he could, with the greatest 
pleasure, sever all the ties that bound him to his pres- 
ent mode of life and become a pilgrim. 

" It is less of a tumble than most people think," he 
continued, "to descend from wealth to the bottom of 
the scale. In Switzerland, a boy who was running in 
the dark, fell into a hole. He clutched frantically at 
the edge with his hands and managed to hang on. 
For a long time he shouted for help, and bruised and 
lacerated his hands struggling to keep from falling to 
the bottom, which he supposed was a terrible distance 
below. At length a man came and told him to let go. 
He did as he was bid, and to his astonishment found 
that the firm, safe bottom of the hole was but a few 
inches below his feet. It is the same with a rich man. 
He strugi^les frantically to keep himself up, thinking 
the bottom means death or worse. Finally, he is com- 
pelled to let go, and, like the Swiss boy, is agreeably 
surprised to find the change a very small one." 

The Count told a story of a young man of good 
family, whom he had known in the Cadet Corps in 
St. Petersburg, who once turned up at his house as 
a pilgrim, as road-worn a specimen as any of the three 
before us. He had been a pilgrim for a year. After 



i02 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

staying with Tolstoi awhile, and tasting the sweets of 
a comfortable life, he one morning suddenly disap- 
peared, without a kopeck in his pocket, and again be- 
came a pilgrim. 

In a sense, the Count thinks all travelers are pil- 
grims ; and while the person who travels for pleasure or 
on business is not to be compared for righteousness to 
the pilgrim who sets out without purse or scrip, yet all 
travelers are worthier than stay-at-home people. Their 
virtues consist in their contempt for a life of ease. 
With delicate flattery he complimented the writer on 
being '' almost a real pilgrim." 

It was hot, sultry weather at Yasnia Polyana, and 
rain and thunder and mud among the untrimmed veg- 
etation about the house made a somewhat gloomy 
framework for the setting of Tolstoi at home. There 
were snatches of sunshine, however, in the morning 
prior to our departure, when the avenues and neglected 
grounds seemed a trifle more cheerful. From the 
Russian point of view, the Count's estate, probably, 
was in very good trim. 

We sat on the portico talking until eleven o'clock on 
the day of our arrival, and we wandered about the 
estate and chatted next morning. Many subjects were 
touched upon. The Count likes to talk and to draw 
out the ideas of his visitors and compare them with 
his own. 

I found him predisposed in favor of America, and 
the fact that I had just come from New York, and rep- 
resented an American newspaper, was an open sesame 
to his sympathies and good will. 

It requires but a few minutes' social intercourse 



WITH COUNT lOLSIOT 103 

with him to discover that, like the rest of us, he has 
his weak points. The Count does not altogether dis- 
dain notoriety, though he may not be conscious of it. 
He seemed to me to possess a fair share of ** author's 
vanity." In spite of the humiUation of the spirit and 
suppression of human exaltation, which is the chief 
foundation of his creed, Tolstoi likes Americans, be- 
cause of the English-speaking world, we were the first 
to translate, read, and appreciate his productions. The 
taste for Russian literature was acquired in the United 
States before it spread to England. 

There have been visitors to Yasnia Polyana who 
have carried away the uncharitable conviction that 
the peculiarities of the Count's daily life are theatri- 
cal ; that he acts an eccentric part. Sometimes, during 
our conversations, I, too, thought him knowingly 
affected, but eventually decided that all his peculiari- 
ties come from sincere convictions and honest eccen- 
tricity of character. 

At times, when talking, Tolstoi leaves the visitor 
momentarily in doubt whether he is not imposing on 
your credulity and trying to fathom your understand- 
ing ; but the final impression is that he is sincere. 
There is a curious mixture in him of a deep knowledge 
of the world and the innocence and confidence of a 
child. Nobody would tr}^ to practice a deception on 
him as a man of the world, because he would feel in 
advance that Tolstoi would be sure to see throuo-h it. 

o 

But by appealing to the benevolent side of his charac- 
ter, it required little penetration to see that the appli- 
cant would have him at a great disadvantage. 

The young man who acted as a butler at the house, 



I04 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

and whom I questioned about his master's habits, told 
me that the moujiks often imposed on his benevolence 
and shamefully abused his charity. From all the 
country round the peasants came to Tolstoi with their 
woes and grievances, much as the freed negroes of the 
South used to appeal to the St. Clairs among the for- 
mer slave owners, after the war. A short time before 
our visit a moujik come to Tolstoi" with a very long face 
and asserted that his horse had died and that he was 
unable to cultivate his land. The Count gave him a 
horse out of his own stables to plow his ground and 
get in his crops. The moujik, who was a worthless 
fellow, took the horse away, sold it, and spent the 
money on vodka. Only recently, too, the overseer of 
the estate had caught a moujik in the act of cutting 
down and carting off trees from the Count's forest. 
He brought the thief to Tolstoi and proposed to take 
him before the court. " Let him go, poor fellow," said 
the author of 'Christ's Christianity.' ''The trees are 
as much his as mine. I neither planted them nor cut 
them down." 

Neither the timber thief nor the man who swindled 
him out of the horse was punished. The wonder is 
that Yasnia Polyana does not become a nest of worth- 
less vagabonds and that the Tolstoi estate^ is not 
stripped as bare as a desert. The latter possibility would 
disturb the Count's equanimity little. He would, in 
fact, utter no word of protest at the spoliation of his 
property, and only the stand taken by the Countess 
and the children prevents the family possessions from 
melting entirely away. 

The estate consists of looo dessiatines, or 2500 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 105 

acres of arable land and forest. Part of it is the old 
family estate, given to the Count's grandfather, General 
Tolstoi, by Catherine II., as a reward for military ser- 
vices. The remainder has been acquired chiefly from 
the literary earnings of the Count. All economic 
affairs he leaves entirely in the hands of his wife. He 
seems scarcely a member of his own family. By re- 
siding in a good house and retaining land and property 
more than sufficient for his bare support, Tolstoi lives 
in perpetual violation of his own conscience. This 
state of affairs he submits to for the sake of his family, 
who are only partially in sympathy with his creed. 

He believes not only that he has no right to the 
estate, but that it would be an act of pride and pre- 
sumption to take upon himself even the right to divide 
it up and give it away. " How can one have the pre- 
sumption to give away what doesn't belong to him? " 

In the matter of land-ownership, Tolstoi declared him- 
self a great admirer of the theories of Henry George. 
He declared George the greatest American citizen of 
the present time. He believed, however, in a system of 
communal, rather than a national, ownership of the 
land. The ideal state of society would be, to him, the 
simple, rural communes, in which every family would 
have the right to till soil enough for its own support. 
There would be no taxes and no government. The 
Count believed that all forms of government are hum- 
bugs, and that the whole machinery of law and law- 
yers, courts and judges, is a barbarity, and an excuse 
for setting one man above another, and enabling the 
privileged few to rob the many. 

Governments he regards as the root of nearly all evils. 



I o 6 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA iVG. 

Tax collectors he considers highwaymen, who are able 
to rob people without bloodshed, simply because the 
tax-payers know that it would be useless to resist the 
powerful organization of which they are members. He 
was looking forward to a day when men would see 
through the fiction of government and would no longer 
consent to be robbed of money, nor to be instructed 
in the art of murdering one another in war. 

He admires America because we have only a hand- 
ful of soldiers, and the bitterness of his soul went out 
to the armed camps of which Berlin and Paris are the 
centers. In his younger days the Count was an officer 
and saw service in the Crimean war ; but since his 
conversion the earth contains for him no more mon- 
strous thing than a body of men drilling and practicing 
every day to perfect themselves in the art of killing the 
largest number of their brothers in the shortest pos- 
sible time. 

The accumulation of vast possessions by individuals 
the Count regards as one of the great evils that people 
have become so accustomed to seeing that they deem 
the wrong far less than it really is. He believed, how- 
ever, that the mission of the large American million- 
aires would be to hasten the climax, when the eyes of 
the people will be opened by the display of tremendous 
contrasts. The moral consciousness of the people 
needs a rude awakening, he thought, and only the de- 
velopment of abnormal contrasts in wealth and poverty 
is likely to bring the people to consider seriously the 
equal rights of all. Just as the undue development 
of the military will one day result in general disarma- 
ment, so, he believes, will the vast accumulations of 



WITH COUNT TOLSrO'l. 107 

the few and the poverty of the many open the people's 
eyes to the fact that banks and government treasuries 
are robber's caves, in which is hoarded the money 
that has been taken from the people. 

The Count, however, didn't think the equalization 
of property will be brought about by violence, but by 
a general moral awakening. Millionaires will become 
convinced that they have no right to the property that 
they now regard as their own, and will give it up ; just 
as he would be willing to move off the family estate at 
Yasnia Polyana. America, he thought, will one day 
set the example. England will follow ; then Russia. 
The thinkers of Russia, he said, are already seriously 
studying the problem of doing away with the private 
ownership of land. 

One could not talk with Tolstoi" for any length of 
time without the subject of religion coming to the 
fore. Only foolish people, he said, trouble their heads 
about whether there is or is not a personal God ; or 
whether Christ was or was not more than human. We 
have our conscience for our guidance, and the only 
thing is to do right. People are mistaken in doing 
good here in the hope of future reward. This is the 
essence of selfishness. It prostitutes the best in hu- 
manity to the level of commerce. There is no merit 
in making a bargain by which you are to receive a 
ruble some time in the future in return for giving a 
poorer brother a kopeck or a crust of bread to-day. 
This is not charity, but usury pure and simple. In 
Russia the best Christians are those who never go to 
church. Priests, ministers, and churches the Count 
holds in scant esteem. The priests he considered as 



lo8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

part and parcel of the governmental machinery for 
grinding the faces of the poor and living without work. 
To swing a censer and chant senseless masses is, in 
his opinion, stage-acting. The time wasted on this 
buffoonery, if devoted to planting and digging pota- 
toes, would suffice them to earn their bread, and then 
there would be no need of preying on the ignorant 
and the superstitious. 

Preachers should talk less about the future state and 
devote themselves, firstly, to earning their own liveli- 
hood by growing grain and vegetables, and, secondly, 
to bringing about the kingdom of heaven on earth. 
The Count had no patience with sectarianism, nor 
with preachers who are sticklers for certain forms of 
administering baptism or the sacrament. The spirit 
of hostility that brings ministers of the gospel on to 
the debating platform, he said, is not the spirit of 
Christ, but of Satan. Preachers and religious teachers 
should devote their energies to the work of compro- 
mising and the bridging of differences rather than 
disputing. 

The world has more need of living examples than of 
weekly sermons. If all the preachers in the world 
would quit their fine houses, refuse their salaries, and 
take to sowing and reaping, and preaching every-day 
sermons of Christ-like lives, they would do more good 
in a week than they do now in a lifetime. According 
to the Count, a minister of the gospel who accepts a 
salary and lives off it, is a robber. The only difference 
between him and a footpad is that, whereas the latter 
knocks you down and rifles your pockets, the minister 
gets at the pockets of honest people by a more inge- 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 1 09 

nious, if less violent, process. In both cases the re- 
sults are the same: both minister and footpad eat 
food that they never produced and which, conse- 
quently, cannot possibly be theirs by right. Such is 
the Count's creed. 

I found Tolstoi a vegetarian, and convinced that the 
ideal physical life is that of the Brahmins of India. 
He believed in reducing one's wants to a minimum, 
and in producing, so far as possible, with one's own 
hands the wherewithal both to feed and clothe the 
body. A state of society in which the condition of 
one would never be such as to excite envy in another 
is the secret of true social happiness. In Russia, the 
pilgrims who roam the country over, depending for 
their support from day to day on the alms of the 
people, approach this ideal, and Tolstoi would, so I 
inferred from his remarks, become a pilgrim himself 
were it not for the restraints of family ties and con- 
siderations. 

When he took me into his little koumiss establish- 
ment to give me a drink of the beverage, he said 
with enthusiasm, that with an acre of grass land and a 
couple of milch mares, a man would possess ample 
property for his support. The mares would live off 
the grass and the man could milk them and live off 
koumiss. 

Temperance finds in the great novelist an enthusiastic 
supporter. He neither drinks intoxicating beverages 
nor smokes, and he includes in the term many other 
indulgences that the ordinary advocates of temperance 
consider apart from their creed. 

In his creed romantic love is also intemperance. 



1 1 o THE O UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

The tender passion that has from all time been the 
theme of the poet and the novelist, Tolstoi deems a 
species of moral depravity, on a par with gluttony, the 
smoking of opium, or indulgence in strong drink. A 
person finding himself, or herself, in love, particularly 
before marriage, should fight against it as against the 
opium habit c^r any other pernicious thing. 

Theater-going, dancing, romantic literature of all 
kinds, anything, in short, that excites the imagination 
to thoughts of love, is intemperance. Cupid is the 
devil in his most artful guise. 

In speaking of the relations of the sexes, Tolstoi" 
talked with the same freedom from restraint as if he 
talked of digging potatoes or mowing hay. 

The Countess and her sister from St. Petersburg sat 
at the other end of the table on one occasion, when 
the Count was particularly inquisitive about the natives 
of East Africa. To an ordinary mortal the situation 
would have been embarrassing in the extreme. The 
ladies, however, were busy chatting together, and their 
ears, of course, were closed to anything the Count or I 
might have said. 

Tolstoi' was deeply interested in the social life of the 
Masai and requested that a copy of " Scouting for 
Stanley in East Africa " might be sent him. 

His interest \\\ the relations of the sexes seemed to 
me to be abnormal, almost morbid. Men and women, 
he insists, should love one another only as friends or as 
brothers and sisters. Matrimony brought about by 
romantic love is an unholy and unnatural alliance, 
that in nine cases out of ten resulted in unhappiness for 
both parties to the contract. 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. Hi 

The keynote of the Count's peculiar creed is " no 
violence." If cuffed on one cheek, he would turn the 
other. No matter what another person may be doing, 
the utmost force that is permitted to be used against 
him is passive resistance or persuasion. ** If a man robs 
you, who are you that sets yourself up to judge him 
whether he is in the right or the wrong ? One man has 
no right to judge another, nor to assume the office of 
executioner by using violence against him. If a man 
knocks you down, who knows but you have deserved 
it? 

" One person has no right to use violence against 
another under any circumstances whatever, not even to 
oppose violence. There must be no self-defense be- 
yond passive resistance. To subdue the passions and 
gain the upper hand of our human pride is man's first 
duty to himself and to his fellows. After that, all the 
rest will come easy enough." 

After listening to such talk the Count's advice to 
keep away from the churches sounded oddly. 

An American minister from New York once visited 
Tolstoi at Yasnia Polyana. Did I know him? I did 
not ; and although Tolstoi spoke with every mark of 
respect for his visitor as a man, he let it be very plainly 
understood that the less the rising generation had to 
do with the modern expounders of the gospels the 
better for their comprehension of the true religion as 
he conceives it. 

Previous to his conversion the Count had been an 
atheist. About ten years before there was a census 
of Russia. It is the custom of the government to im- 
press the students of the universities to assist in taking 



ti2 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

a census. Tolstoi's eldest son was then a student in 
Moscow, and the father accompanied the son in going 
his rounds to number the people. 

The task took them into some of the Moscow slums. 
The scenes of squalid poverty and wretchedness that 
the Count was then brought in contact with was the 
turning point in his career. For fifty years he had 
lived a life of selfish ease and pleasure. He had been 
through the whole mill of gay, fashionable existence. 
As a youth, he had been dissipated ; as a man, well-to- 
do and successful. The world had been to him a 
pleasure-ground, and the future a subject of philosoph- 
ical speculation. 

He went home a changed man. It seemed as if all 
his life had been utterly wasted. The selfishness of a 
life that had been largely devoted to pleasure and self- 
seeking now seemed to him an enormity of error and 
wrong. How should he expiate the great crime of 
fifty years of wrong-doing? 

He sought consolation in the existing forms of 
religion. He said he found them worse than honest 
atheism. He turned to the Scriptures and independ- 
ent research and harkeiied to the teachings of Sutaieff, 
a free-thinking peasant of Novgorod, who had been 
persecuted by the priests for independent action in the 
matter of baptizing his children. He drew inspiration 
from the child-like simplicity of the peasantry on his 
estate. He brought to bear on his observations and 
researches the mind of a cultured man and the intellect 
of a genius. The result has been the teachings that 
the world now recognizes as the Tolstoian creed. 

After he had become convinced that salvation lay in 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 1 13 

living a Christly life in a truly unselfish sense, the 
Count was for getting rid of his property forthwith by 
distributing it among the peasantry. His plan was to 
descend at once to the level of the poorest of those 
about him, and earn his living with the plow and the 
hoe. That this was not done was due entirely to the 
Countess and friends of the family. 

Such, then, was the apostle of this new religion, or, 
as he would say, of the Christian religion rightly inter- 
preted, at home. Practical people in America would 
find in many of his ideas the vagaries of an ill-balanced 
but brilliant intellect. 

Genius-like, he was not always logical and con- 
sistent. In discussing the merits of Bellamy's "Look- 
ing Backward," he condemned the author's judgment 
in presuming that such a state of society as he de- 
scribes would be possible with human beings, possessed 
with the weaknesses and frailties of our kind. Only 
angels, he said, could exist under such conditions. 
Yet in the case of these same human beings, with the 
same weaknesses and frailties that would be the stum- 
bling block in Bellamy's new social world, he advocated 
** no government, no police, no prisons, no army, no 
church, no judiciar3% no punishment for wrong doing." 

The Count's ideas of what is best were still in a 
state of development. A couple of years before xv^y 
visit Mr. Stead, of the '* Review of Reviews," paid him 
a visit. At that time he told Stead that he regretted 
every moment that he did not feel he was dyiiig. He 
longed to have done with this world and to fathom 
the mystery of the next. Now he had changed his 
mind and told me his only fear was that he would not 



ii4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

live long enough to finish all the work he wanted to 
do. 

The wife of Tolstoi is a buxom lady, who looked 
about forty. She has a broad, matronly figure ; a kind, 
motherly face, and was the daughter of a St. Peters- 
burg physician. She is the mother of thirteen children, 
of whom nine were living. The eldest daughter and 
the two youngest children were at home. The others 
were traveling or away visiting, and the eldest son 
was officiating as Secretary on a Commission at the 
Prison Congress, which was then sitting in St. Peters- 
burg. He had just written a letter to his mother, ex- 
pressing disgust at the round of speeches and dinners 
that appeared to him to be the only probable outcome 
of the Congress. 

The Countess acted as her husband's amanuensis 
and copyist. She copied and corrected all of his manu- 
scripts. She seemed to be a most excellent woman. 

The family life appeared to be altogether charming. 
Both wife and children fairly idolize the Count. The 
nieces also think their uncle the embodiment of wisdom 
and goodness, and the only point on which they openly 
take issue with him is, naturally enough, on the sub- 
ject of romantic love as denounced in the *' Kreutzer 
Sonata." 

These young people do not always fathom the 
Count, but they never doubt the wisdom of his actions 
or the goodness of his motives. Everything he does 
is right. If you venture to criticise anything the 
Count has said or done, in their hearing, they defend 
him stoutly. 

We stayed to lunch at twelve, then rode away. In 



WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 115 

the house of strict temperance, where the master lives 
on curds and koumiss, cutlets and a bottle of wine were 
set out for the visitors. We ate the cutlets but left 
the wine untouched. 

" I thank you very much for coming," said the Count, 
as he shook hands and advised us to be careful of our 
horses. 

" I wish you a pleasant journey to the Crimea," said 
the Countess, " and a safe return to America." 

Russia is a country where fantastic religious ideas 
seem to find a congenial soil. The dwarfing of the 
people's intellects in matters political, is productive of 
curious expansions in other directions. Between Mos- 
cow and Tula I stumbled upon a truly queer religious 
idea. None but a logical mind could, however, have 
conceived it. It is intended chiefly to comfort and 
console people of a doubting and skeptical turn of 
mind. People who are so unfortunately constituted 
that they don't know whether or not to believe in the 
existence of a personal God, and are forever casting 
about for light on the subject, are instructed by the 
new religion to " pray to the power that is responsible 
for their existence." By adopting this broad ground, 
all fears of missing the mark, so to speak, are done 
away with, and none need be afraid of going astray 
through ignorance or misconception. 



CHAPTER VII. 

AMONG THE MOUJIKS. 

FROM Moscow to Count Tolstoi's our road was 
through the northern forest zone, where the mou- 
jiks are poor and superstitious. In many of the win- 
dows of the peasants' cottages were dead branches 
and faded wreaths of ferns and twigs. These were 
reminiscent of the Whitsuntide celebrations, which the 
Russian peasantry keep up with many curious cere-, 
monies, remnants of their old heathen rites. 

Games that were formerly celebrated in honor of 
the Goddess of Spring, have now been transferred with 
changed names and certain modifications to the Whit- 
suntide festivities. On the Thursday before Whit- 
Sunday the peasants flock to the forests and devote 
themselves to singing and making merry. They cut 
down a 3'oung birch tree and dress it in gown and gar- 
land in rude imitation of a female, whom they further- 
more garnish with bright ribbons and scraps of rag. 
This is the Goddess of Spring, in whose honor they 
now feast and make merry under the trees. In the 
evening they carry the goddess home with them, singing 
and dancing before her on the wa)-, and install her as 
an honored guest in one of their houses till Whit- 
Sunday. Visits of ceremony are paid to her by the 
inhabitants of the village on Friday and Saturday, and 

ii6 



AMONG THE MOUJIKS. 117 

on Sunday they take her to the nearest pond or stream 
and throw her in. 

On Whit-Sunday the Russian churches are decorated 
with green as ours are on Christmas ; and the flowers 
and branches are preserved and taken to their homes 
by the peasants, who beheve them to be efficacious in 
keeping out witches, strange domovois, and epidemic 
diseases. 

Many strange customs still obtain in different parts 
of Russia in connection with spring, which have come 
down from the ancient heathen worship of the vernal 
Deity. All over Russia is held on Thursday, in the 
seventh week after Easter, the feast, called Semik. 
In most places, the Spring Goddess takes the form 
mentioned above. In others, however, the handsomest 
maiden of the village is chosen to represent Spring; 
she is enveloped in boughs and blossoms and carried 
about by the other girls. In the evening the girls and 
young moujiks join in a circling dance, known as the 
khorovod. The maidens wear floral wreaths and the 
youths sport flowers in their hat-bands. After the 
dancing is over, the girls repair to the nearest water 
and toss in their wreaths, watching them anxiously to 
see whether they sink or swim, float ashore, or turn 
round in a circle. If a wreath doesn't run ashore, the 
lucky damsel who has been wearing it will have long 
life and a happy marriage. If it circles round, the 
wearer will become the victim of unrequited love; 
and if it sinks she will either become an old maid or 
meet with an early death. 

When going to the forest to manufacture the god- 
dess from a young birch, or to envelop the chosen one 



1 1 S THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

in foliage, the maidens sing an ode addressed to the 
trees, which is evidently a relic of ancient tree-worship. 
The oak is the Summer tree, and the birch the tree of 
Spring. They first address the oaks, singing : 

Rejoice not, Oaks ; 

Rejoice not, green Oaks. 

Not to you go the maidens, 

Not to you do they bring pies, cakes, omelettes. 

Then turning to the birches, which are the Semik 
or seventh week (after Easter) trees, they sing, raising 
their voices to a shout : 

lo, lo, Semik and Troitsa (Trinity) ! 
Rejoice, Birches, rejoice green trees ! 
To yoii go the maidens. 
To yoii they bring pies, cakes, omelettes. 

At the present day, in India, the natives of remote 
villages, in which there is no large idol, place offerings 
of food at the foot of trees that have been made 
sacred to certain of their gods. And a common 
enough sight is to see the people bowing to the 
ground, apparently worshiping these trees. In reality 
they are paying their devotions to the god, whom the 
tree, in the absence of the idol itself, is believed to 
represent. The above song of the Russian village 
maidens seems to point to a time in the past when 
offerings of food were also made to trees in that 
country. 

From one end of Russia to the other there is one 
form of amusement that is common to the whole peo- 
ple. It is the circling dance known as the khorovod. 
It is common also to the Slavs of other countries, be- 



AMONG THE MOUJIKS. 119 

ing in fact a Slav dance, which gives it a broader geo- 
graphical and ethnographical meaning. The writer 
has seen more of it, indeed, in the villages of Crotia 
and Slavonia, Austria-Hungary, than in Russia. The 
ride through Russia was made during hay-time and 
harvest, the busy season, when the young peasants 
have little time for khorovods on a grand scale. But 
the children are given to dancing khorovods of an 
evening, and the writer also saw one danced by a 
troupe of Little Russians in one of the summer gardens 
of St. Petersburg. 

Near every village is an open spot, where on holidays 
the young people, arrayed in their brightest costumes, 
assemble to perform khorovod dances. They form 
themselves in a circle, as in the old-fashioned game of 
kiss-in-the-ring, and commence moving round and 
round, this way and that, singing songs appropriate to 
the season and the occasion. There are spring khor- 
ovods, performed at Easter and Whitsuntide; summer 
khorovods for midsummer, and autumn khorovods 
after harvest. Sometimes, in a large village, two khor- 
ovods are formed, one at each end of the broad, long 
street, of which there is only one in a Russian village, 
as has been observed. At a signal, the two khorovods, 
which may be a verst apart, begin moving toward each 
other, preserving the circular formation in the broad 
road, singing and circling, until they come together in 
the middle of the village. 

The songs are legion, and on every phase of Russian 
rural life : love, marriage, death, harvest, mother-in-law, 
and what not. There is the " Millet-sowing khorovod," 
the " Beer-brewing khorovod," and one called the 



I20 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

" Titmouse." The titmouse khorovod, as well as 
many others, has a sort of minor dramatic character. 
The dramatis personcE consists of the Bullfinch, a 
young man, or a girl with a man's hat on; the Tit- 
mouse, his sister, and any number of marriageable 
maidens, who join hands and form a ring around them. 
The Bullfinch wishes to get married, and the Titmouse 
has assumed the responsibility of finding him a suit- 
able spouse. 

The khorovod begins to circle and to sing in the 
sad, low cadence peculiar to Russian village maidens: 

Beyond the sea the Titmouse lived ; 

Not grand, nor sumptuous, was her state, etc.; 

chorusing observations on the character and peculiari- 
ties of many different birds. A feast is held, at which, 
according to regular Russian tradition, the man look- 
ing for a bride may pick and choose among the many 
who are to be present. 

The widow Owl, though uninvited, came. . . . 
The Owl caressed the feathers of her head. . . . 
Why ever don't you marry Bullfinch, dear .? . . . etc. 

The Bullfinch passes various shrewd opinions on the 
merits or demerits of the several candidates : " I'd take 
the Magpie — but she chatters so," — and finally winds 
up by choosing the Quail, a plump and useful, rather 
than ornamental, bird. 

Generally the songs of the khorovods, when not de- 
voted to any particular theme, deal with the old, yet 
ever new, story of love. A peculiarity of these village 
love songs is that they seldom treat of the sentiment in 



AMONG THE MOUJIKS. 121 

a joyous, triumphant mood ; but deal almost exclu- 
sively with its sad and melancholy phases. It is a 
maiden repining for her lover, who has died or gone 
away ; a youth lamenting the perfidy of his sweet- 
heart, who has jilted him for the sake of a richer suitor • 
a young couple whose parents forbid them to marry; 
a young wife whose husband has died or been drafted 
into the army ; a maiden carried off by marauding Tar- 
tars; a hard mother-in-law, who ill-uses the young 
bride — these are the melancholy themes of the love 
songs of the Russian peasants. The melody of the 
songs, too, is in harmony with the sentiments, being 
sung in a sad, low, wailing tone, — a lamentation rather 
than a song. 

The songs of the khorovods, indeed, are in keeping 
with the whole character of the Russian land, life, and 
institutions. They are in harmony and color with the 
monotonous gray of the level steppes, and the bound- 
less wilderness of the northern forests ; level, sad, and 
melancholy to the senses. From Archangel to Astra- 
khan there is neither mountain nor beauteous valley ; 
in the equally broad realm of Russian popular song the 
general tone is correspondingly monotonous. In spirit, 
the songs breathe the tragedy of the people's life and 
history. The story of the Russian peasantry is a mel- 
ancholy history of toil, sorrow, suffering, and despair. 
Their songs are a reflection of their history ; and where 
i they sometimes aspire to comedy, a hollow, counter- 
\ feit, almost pitiful ring may readily be detected. Their 
humorous efforts treat almost exclusively of the uni- 
versal vice of drunkenness among the moujiks, and of 
wife-beating. 



12 2 THR O UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

A fair specimen is the khorovod '' A Wife's Love." 
A youth, and maiden, who represent the husband and 
wife, are surrounded by the circle of singers. The hus- 
band offers his wife a present, which she seizes and 
flings contemptuously to the ground. The khorovod 
singers, amazed at this exhibition of wifely insubordi- 
nation, sing: 

Good people, only see! 

She does not love her husband at all ! 

Never agrees with him, never bows down to him ; 

From him turns away ! 

The husband goes to the bazaar and buys a whip, 
which he offers his wife as a more acceptable present 
than the one she threw on the ground. When he 
brings a whip in his hand, she receives him with every 
mark of affection ; and after a blow with it she bows 
very low and submissively, and rewards him with 
kisses. The khorovod singers laugh approvingly and 
change their song : 

Good people only see ! 

How well she loves her lord ! 

Always agrees with him ; always bows down to him ; 

Gives him kisses, even. 

But the subject of wife-beating is not always treated 
of humorously in the khorovods. One popular song 
runs thus : 

Beat not thy wife without a cause ; 
But only for good cause beat thy wife ; 
And for a great offense, — etc. 

These circling choral dances are believed to be of 
very remote antiquity among the people of Russia. 



AMOiVG THE MOUJIKS. 123 

They seem to be allied to somewhat similar dances 
performed by the Greeks, and doubtless had their 
origin in pagan ceremonies, when the devotees formed 
in circles round their idols. Near Tula, the first large 
town we rode through after leaving Moscow, is a ring 
of stones, which, according to a legend of the dis- 
trict, represents a khorovod of singing maidens, who, 
while circling round, were suddenly transformed into 
stones. 

In the winter, when the khorovods or other outdoor 
games are out of season, the young people indulge in 
social gatherings at each other's homes, called in some 
districts Besyedi, in others Posidyelki. Special even- 
ings are appointed by the social leaders of the com- 
munity, and one of the moujiks offers them the use of 
his house for the occasion. The maidens usually take 
some light work with them, such as knitting, or spin- 
ning wool or flax. The young men who may be pos- 
sessed of musical talents bring, their instruments, 
which are usually a rude sort of flageolet or flute made 
of lengths of reed, or the balalaika of Little Russia, a 
simple stringed instrument. Refreshments, consisting 
of kwass and rye cakes, or if the entertainers for the 
occasion are able to afford the luxury, piroghi, a sort 
of meat pie, that Russians of the better classes eat at 
the beginning of their dinner with the soup, are pro- 
vided. The evening is spent in singing songs with a 
rousing chorus, dancing, and listening to stories from 
the lips of long-tongued old women, or garrulous old 
moujiks with a reputation as story-tellers, and deposi- 
tories of folk-lore and tradition. 

The dances consist of standing in rows or in a circle, 



124 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

forming a sort of indoor khorovod, while several of 
the number take the middle of the floor, turning alter- 
nately to one another their backs and faces, meanwhile 
singing and stamping time with the feet. The songs 
of the Posidyelki gatherings treat chiefly of the senti- 
ments of love and marriage : 

Remember, dear, remember, 

My former love. 

How we two together, my own, would wander. 

Or sit through the dark autumn nights. 

And whisper sweet secret words. 

Thou, my own, must never marry. 

I, the maiden, will never wed ! 

Soon, very soon, my love has changed her mind: 

Marry, dear, marry ! I am going to wed. 

In Little Russia, more particularly, these social 
gatherings last all night, the party breaking up at 
dawn. People who have seen something of the flirta- 
tions of the young burlaks and servant girls in St. 
Petersburg, where after ten o'clock of an evening, 
while walking the streets, you are constantly stumb- 
ling up against young workmen hugging and kissing 
their sweethearts in the untrusty shadows of porches 
and doorways, need only to be told that flirtation is 
one of the recognized privileges at the Posidyelki, and 
that the village moujik's ideas of flirtation are even 
more crude than the burlak's. 

In some districts it is customary, instead of holding 
the Posidyelki at each house of the village in turn, to 
select the largest and most suitable, and rent it for the 
evenings of the entire winter. The young men pay a 
couple of kopecks an evening, or a quarter of a ruble 



AMONG THE MO U J IKS. 125 

for the season. The moujik who owns and lives in the 
selected cottage derives a revenue of ten or fifteen 
rubles from the enterprise each winter, and considers 
himself very well recompensed for the trifling annoy- 
ance of having his home converted into a pandemo- 
nium of dance and song about every night for several 
months. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SCENES ON THE ROAD. 

FOR the first week of our ride the weather was sul- 
try, and occasional thunder-showers, and some- 
times dismal rainy days, contributed to the discomforts 
of both horses and riders. Green-head horse-flies 
attacked Texas and his companion by the hundreds ; 
and their ravenousness was intensified by the stormy 
character of the weather to such a degree that nothing 
but a blow would cause them to relinquish their hold. 
Texas, being a peculiarly thin-skinned and particular 
sort of animal, danced and capered along, kicking, 
striking, and biting at them every step of the way, the 
very picture of equine misery. Occasionally he con- 
sidered himself worried to a point that would justify 
him in lying down in the road and rolling, regardless 
of the fact that a human being was in the saddle ; and 
he would pause and impudently essay a certain signifi- 
cant and time-honored movement of the legs, peculiar 
to his tribe, preliminary to carrying out this heroic 
method of ridding himself of his tormentors. 

Perhaps it was owing to the flies, but along these 
early stages of the journey he developed a remarkable 
fondness for sidling up against Sascha's horse and en- 
deavoring to persuade that more sedate animal to halt 
and permit him to rub himself against him as against 
a tree or fence. Finding these cajolings of no avail, 

126 



SCENES ON THE ROAD. 1 27 

owing to the objections of every other member of the 
party, he eventually took to scrubbing up against him 
as we rode along. Our fortunes at night were various, 
though always of a degree calculated to humble us to 
the level of the rude, uncivilized life and unrefinements 
of the moujik. Sometimes we stayed at traktirs, but 
in the smaller villages, where the prospective consump- 
tion of vodka and weak tea would not justify the es- 
tablishment of a house of public accommodation, we 
had to seek refuge with a moujik. 

Traktirs, as everything else in Russia that is patron- 
ized by the commoner subjects of the Czar, are regarded 
by the authorities chiefly as teats from which the 
largest possible yield of taxes are to be milked. A 
roadside traktir, according to a proprietor of one whom 
we questioned, pays a tax of 500 rubles a year and up- 
ward ; and a courtyard for the accommodation of teams, 
250 rubles. 

No wonder these people are picayunish and over- 
reaching in their small way, and disposed to make the 
utmost of any casual stranger who comes along. The 
moujiks presented a somewhat less monotonous level 
of commercial depravity than the proprietors of the 
traktirs ; but the general level of all was disagreeably 
low. The tendency of all from whom we were com- 
pelled to seek accommodation for man and beast, seemed 
to be to get the utmost possible number of kopecks 
out of us, and part from next to nothing in return. 
Most of them would simply speculate on our neces- 
sities, and take advantage of the fact that we had to 
accept what they chose to supply us with or go with- 
out. 



128 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. 

The writer's preconceived idea of rural Russia was, 
that it would be found a country very poor as to ready 
money, but, nevertheless, a rude plenty in the matter 
of horse-feed and coarse food. The first proposition 
turned out to be singularly correct, and rye bread was 
tolerably plenty, but it was occasionally impossible to 
get a feed of oats for our horses, and I doubt whether 
Texas had a half-dozen feeds of decent hay on the whole 
journey. The " hay " was almost invariably nothing 
but weeds ; and, in striking contrast to the American 
custom of supplying it to a traveler's horse in gener- 
ous armfuls, a pair of scales would be brought forth, 
and " skoolka pfund ? " (how many pounds?) would be 
the question. And, regardless of its glaring worthless. 
ness, the amount called for would be weighed as critically 
as though it were the most precious and valuable com- 
modity, the veriest pinches being deducted to avoid 
over-weight. A particularly annoying advantage that 
was as often as not taken of us, in the bargain, was to 
select the moldiest and most utterly worthless armfuls 
that could be found, with the choice of that or nothing 
at all. The idea seemed to be to take advantage of 
strangers, to dispose of what they couldn't very well 
get rid of to regular customers. 

In the matter of food, they were, almost without ex- 
ception, abominably lazy, and reluctant to put them- 
selves to extra trouble, even for the sake of earning 
money. Milk was easy to obtain, for the reason that 
no trouble was required beyond fetching it out of the 
cellar ; and it was often of excellent quality and accept- 
ably cold. A suggestion to cook a chicken, or even to 
fry us eggs, invariably brought a positive negative as to 



SCENES ON THE ROAD. 129 

the chicken, and a counter-suggestion of "samovar" 
on the question of the eggs. 

'' Samovar " meant that it would, be less trouble to 
cook the eggs in the same water that was being boiled 
to make tea, a handy, slip-shod method exceedingly con- 
genial to a shiftless, reluctant mind. There were ex- 
ceptions, however, and they are as memorable as fresh 
little oases on a journey across a desert, no less from 
their scarcity than from their striking contrast. 

After leaving Count Tolstoi's, the nature of the 
country and the character of the villages underwent a 
change. We were leaving the region where all had 
formerly been covered with forest, and were getting 
into the borderland between forest and steppe. The 
houses of the moujiks v/ere no longer built exclu- 
sively of wood ; but, commencing with Yasnia Polyana 
itself, at least half the number in the villages were of 
brick. The moujiks make their own bricks, and for 
the most part build their own houses. In work of this 
sort, which in most countries would be performed by 
professional bricklayers and carpenters, the moujiks 
are probably cleverer than the peasants in almost any 
other countr}^ in the world. To a man, almost, they 
are expert with an ax, and can hew logs and build a 
house far neater than the American backwoodsman. 

In building a log-house, the walls are calked with 
hemp, twisted up like a hay rope and punched tightly 
into every crack and crevice. The house is put to- 
gether close to where it is to stand, and then moved 
into its proper position b}^ means of rollers and levers. 
Whilst in process of building, a rude wooden cross is 
erected close by, presumably as a measure of protec- 



130 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

tion against the interference of evil spirits and witches. 

Curious ceremonies are performed in connection with 
occupying a new house, varying somewhat in different 
parts of Russia, but all clearly allied to the rites and 
ceremonies of old heathen times. 

It is believed that if the builders call out the name 
of any one whilst delivering the initiative blows of the 
axes, the person denominated will immediately go into 
a decline and quickly die. By-standers are particularly 
deferential to.ward the builders during the preliminaries 
of putting up a house, lest offense might be given ; and 
the former are expected to call out the name of some 
bird or animal, in proof that they have not maliciously 
brought evil upon any of their neighbors. 

In many parts of Russia the foundations of the new 
house are sprinkled with the blood of some victim 
slaughtered for the purpose — nowadays, a fowl or young 
kid ; but in ancient pagan times, probably a human 
being. The head of the slaughtered fowl or animal is 
cut off and buried under the corner of the new edifice 
that is to be occupied by the ikons, the most vener- 
ated part of the house. 

Another part of the new house, to which great 
ceremonial importance is attached, is the threshold. 
Precautions are taken to prevent any one crossing it 
until it has been crossed by the oldest member of the 
family who is to occupy it, and a cross is made on it to 
bar the ingress of witches and objectionable spirits. 
In various provinces some venerable household god, 
such as a small ikon, or relic of a saint, that has been 
for a long time an heirloom of the family, is buried 
under the threshold ; and the more superstitious of 



SCENES ON THE ROAD. 13I 

the peasants are extremely reluctant to sit clown on the 
threshold of a house. In some places, if a child is still- 
born in the house it is the custom to bury it under the 
threshold ; and when a child has been baptized, it is 
held over the threshold for a minute or two on the way 
home from the church. To wash a sick child over tlie 
threshold is also believed to be almost as efficacious a 
remedy as sprinkling it with holy water. 

When a family are moving out of an old house into 
a new one, everything portable is removed from the 
former residence, and a fire is kindled in the stove by 
the oldest female member of the family. At midday, 
the embers of this farewell fire are put in a jar and 
carefully carried to the new domicile and placed in the 
new stove. The jar is smashed and the fragments care- 
fully collected and buried in the same corner that has 
been honored with the head of the sacrificial cock or 
lamb at the laying of the foundations. 

When peasants migrate long distances, and the jar 
of embers cannot possibly be managed, they are care- 
ful to take with them a relic of some kind from the old 
stove, to be incorporated with the one they expect to 
build in their new home. In connection with the 
house-changing ceremonies, moreover, great impor- 
tance is attached to certain formulas addressed to the 
domovoi, or house spirit, who is cordially invited to 
accompany the family to their new home, and is wel- 
comed at the threshold of the new house by the heads 
of the family w^ith bread and salt. 

The removal of the domestic ikons is a matter of 
considerable ceremony in many places, where the 
moujiks seem to have gone little further in their con- 



132 77IK0UGII jRUSSlA OJV A MUSTANC, 

version to Christianity than to transfer their heathen 
conceptions and ceremonies from the liousehold idols 
of their ancestors to the holy ikons of the Orthodox 
religion. A cock and hen are carried into the new 
house and turned loose, whilst the head of the family 
respectfully holds the ikons until the cock crows, 
before placing them in their new corner. As great 
misfortune would come upon the family should chan- 
ticleer refuse to lend his support to this all-important 
ceremony, care is taken to ascertain beforehand the 
crowing proclivities of the various members of the farm- 
yard flock, so as to select one that maybe depended on 
to make himself heard in no uncertain manner. 

On the ninth day of the ride we crossed the second 
provincial boundary line, which took us out of the 
province of Tula into Orel, and we passed through the 
town of Msuesue. Strange to say, we here discovered, 
amongthemoujiks, a local peculiarity that one is almost 
sure to find among the peasants of certain localities in 
any Eastern country. In reply to our inquiries about 
distances, they always replied that it was a '' verst and a 
half," regardless of the actual distance. You find the 
same thing in Persia and in Asiatic Turkey. It is sim- 
ply a curious phase of Oriental politeness, which leads 
the people to give the traveler an answer such as they 
imagine will fall pleasantly on his ear. In certain parts 
of Persia, the writer found it next to impossible to 
learn the actual distance to any given point ahead, 
owing to this extremely annoying peculiarity. They 
take it for granted that the desire of the questioner is 
to arrive as quickly as possible at the end of the 
fatigues and discomforts of the road, and so they sim- 



SCENES ON THE ROAD. 133 

ply give rein to the nonsensical politeness of misinform- 
ing him as to the distance, in order to minimize it 
and win his momentary approval. 

In Orel we, as a matter of course, excited the suspi- 
cions of the police, who, however, contented themselves 
with merely keeping a close watch upon our move- 
ments until we left the city. The streets of Orel were 
disreputably rough even for a Russian provincial city, 
and the whole place seemed such a wretched dust-hole 
that we halted in it only long enough to get dinner 
and to give our horses a few hours' rest. As in any 
other Russian town the conspicuous objects were the 
churches and the prison. At the doors of the churches 
stood old men, mechanically jingling little hand-bells, 
and extending to passers-by, for donations, alms-re- 
ceivers decorated with crosses. 

A peculiar feature of religious fanaticism and men- 
dicancy in Russia are certain old men who sometimes 
take their stand at favorable points in the cities, and 
sometimes wander about all over the empire, from vil- 
lage to village, like the wandering dervishes of Persia. 
These men have taken vows to collect money enough 
to build a church for the salvation of their own souls, 
or they hold commissions from one or other of the big 
churches of Moscow or Kiev to collect money for re- 
pairs or other purposes. They simply devote their 
lives to wandering about and begging for money, and 
because it is not for their own use, but for religious pur- 
poses, they are able to accumulate large sums. 

Here, it seemed to the writer, newly impressed at 
this time with the financial slipperiness of the people 
along the road, was a particularly fine field for the ex- 



134 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

ercise of small knavery, by collecting donations from the 
Orthodox and easily-gulled moujiks, under the pretense 
of wishing to build a church. It seemed to me that 
this would be an exceedingly congenial game to any 
number of Russians ; but my companion assured me 
that this class of fraud was positively unknown among 
them, owing to their dread of incurring the wrath of the 
saints. There was probably no mistake whatever about 
this explanation. One who might be the biggest rogue 
in all Russia in dealing with his fellows, would tremble 
in his boots with fear at the suggestion of bamboozling 
the saints by collecting money falsely in their name. 
And on the road, in any dangerous part of the country 
infested by Orthodox robbers, the toe-nail or shin-bone 
of a saint, bearing the " hall-mark " of Holy Kiev to 
prove its genuineness, would be a better protection to 
the traveler than a whole arsenal of revolvers. 

All through the provinces of Orel and Kursk, our ears 
were gladdened,— evening, night, and morning, — by the 
singing of an astonishing number of nightingales. The 
forests seemed alive with them, and of an evening 
fairly rang with their sweet melody. Whether influ- 
enced by the cheeriness and the example of these forest 
songsters, or whether this particular part of Russia is 
blessed with some mysterious property of earth or air 
that inspires the vocal muse in humans as well as birds, 
seemed a reasonable enough fantasy in which to indulge 
one's mind ; for here, too, we heard more singing from 
the village maidens than at any other part of the ride. 
Nightingales are, indeed, said by some authorities to 
be more plentiful in this part of Russia than in any 
other country. It would be interesting to know what 



SCENES ON THE ROAD. I35 

attracts such numbers of them to this particular 
locality. 

In the villages we now began to see small and tem- 
porary rope-walks, and the cultivated landscape, which 
farther north presented chiefly fields of rye and pota- 
toes, here displayed broad areas of hemp, one of the 
great staples of Russian export. The village rope- 
walks were the property of itinerant rope-walkers, who 
wander over the country from village to village to ply 
•their trade. They usually have a horse and telega to 
convey their rope-making paraphernalia, and in all re- 
spects live the life of gypsies and tinkers. They make 
the hemp crops of the moujiks into rope of various 
sizes for a small amount per pood, and, when they have 
exhausted the stock of customers in one village, pull 
up stakes and move on to the next. 

It was in the village of Subazhna where a youthful 
assistant to one of these rope-makers gave me a new 
idea of the extent to which the curse of vodka-drink- 
ing has undermined the moral perceptions of the rural 
Russians. It was a wet, miserable day, and we were 
compelled to remain over at the village traktir. It 
was some sort of a holiday, and the traktir was full 
of roystering moujiks, spending the day, as moujiks 
spend all their holidays, — drinking themselves into a 
beastly state of intoxication. 

I had taken a little table out under the shed and 
was writing a letter, when there came reeling' out of 
the back door the youth in question, well-nigh help- 
lessly drunk. He was not more than twelve years old, 
and was endeavoring, in a pitifully maudlin way, to 
make a display of jollification. Over and over again 



136 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

he fell sprawling in the mud, and it was pouring with 
rain. At length, after staggering about the yard and 
falling a number of times, insensibility or helplessness 
overcame him, and, already drenched to the skin and 
plastered with mud, the poor little wretch fell like a 
log into a puddle of mud and slush, the most pitiable 
case of "drunk and incapable" that it had ever been 
my misfortune to see. 

This was not later than ten o'clock in the morning. 
And a particularly revolting sight was to see full-grown 
men, still in the possession of their senses, taking no 
other notice of this child, lying there drunk in the 
pelting rain, than to make some trifling and quite in- 
different attempt at jocularity at his expense. Sascha 
and I carried him under the shed and laid him on 
some hay, a proceeding that attracted ten times as 
much notice as did the condition of the precocious 
bibber, from the men whom he had beaten in the reck- 
less race to get into the gutter and thereby glorify the 
saint in whose honor they were spending the holiday. 

When we had been a couple of hours on the road, 
next day, Sascha suddenly discovered that he had lost 
his passport ; and when, at noon, we reached a village, 
it seemed indeed a curious verification of the old 
maxim that " misfortunes never come singly," that 
we should for the first time on the ride make the un- 
welcome acquaintance of an uriadnik. 

Of all the vast multitude of bureaucratic satellites 
that revolve about the throne and the sacred autoc- 
racy of the Great White Czar, to prevent it being 
blown over by the breath of public opinion, my readers 
afe commended to the uriadnik, as a valuable study in 



SCEA'ES ON THE ROAD. 137 

the science of paternal government as it is understood 
at St. Petersburg. 

The uriadnik first appeared on the stage in 1878; 
and in the great Russian drama of "The Czar and his 
Lo}'al Moujiks," plays the part of rural autocrat among 
the latter. Commencing in this picturesque role, he 
has succeeded in working his way up to the distin- 
guished position of first villain in the Russian tchin. 
His most critical and competent judges are the mou- 
jiks, whom his existence and the exercise of his talents 
mostly concern ; and from one end of Russia to the 
other, the writer could get from them but one verdict, 
which was that the uriadnik is the prettiest combina- 
tion of police-tyrant, bribe-taker, blackmail-levier, and 
all-round scourger of his children, that their amiable and 
well-meaning father, the Czar, has allowed to be laid 
on their backs. The very word " uriadnik," is indeed 
likely to always remain in use among the Russian peas- 
antry, even should they and the QntivQ dramatis personce 
of the paternal government one day disappear, and it 
will be as the synonym of as many attributes of ras- 
cality as could possibly be crowded into the character 
of one person. The wearers of the title have become 
a by-word among the moujiks, who have, since their 
introduction among them, been brought into closer 
touch with the governing body than they were before. 

As the Czar is autocrat of Russia, and a Governor- 
General of his province, so is the uriadnik autocrat of 
the village community. Prior to 1878, the moujiks 
were left very much to the management of their own 
village affairs, and if tliey paid their taxes promptly, 
and allowed their minds to remain dormant on the 



1 3 8 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

perilous questions of State politics and religion, were 
not likely to be annoyed and harassed in their daily 
life. When the Nihilists commenced to stir things up, 
however, prior to the assassination of Alexander II, 
and a particularly active crusade was inaugurated 
against them, a full share of the repressive measures 
fell on the people for whose liberation the desperate 
knights of bomb and pistol professed to be working. 
A force of near 6ooo uriadniks was organized and 
scattered throughout rural Russia, and given police 
powers in the village communes ; and in Russia "police 
powers " means well-nigh anything under the sun in 
the shape of tyrannical and irresponsible interference 
with the private citizen. 

Like all Russian ofificials, the uriadnik is underpaid, 
and would find it very difficult indeed to keep up 
appearances consistent with the importance of his 
official position, if he had no other source of income 
than his salary. The office of uriadnik is worth 200 
rubles a year, or about $io a month. Yet you see 
these gentlemen sporting gold watches, and they ap- 
pear, on the otherwise monotonous and colorless field 
of Russian rural life, full-blown, well-nourished, even 
gorgeous flowers. They have far more tyrannical 
power over the peasantry than has the Turkish zaptieh 
among the villages of Asia Minor. 

Though " paternal," the Russian government scarcely 
seems, in any of its relations, part of the same family as 
the people. In a constitutional country the police- 
man, despite his uniform and baton, always gives the 
impression of being in familiar touch with the people, 
even those whose heads he may be on the point of 



SCEXES OX THE ROAD. 139 

cracking ; and there is a subtle spirit of apology in his 
bearing and movements. It is as though he were say- 
ing to his fellow-citizens, whom he is ordering to " move 
on," " It's my duty, you know, and I have no option 
but to order you about ; otherwise I should be very 
happy to let you loiter and look in the windows or do 
anything else you please." 

All this is reversed in the Russian police. They, 
forsooth, are anything but the servants of the people, 
and they always impressed me as invaders and con- 
querors of the country. They represent the Czar, the 
autocratic power ; and their bearing is insufferably in- 
solent, or condescendingly tolerant, according to the 
disposition of the individual policeman or the status 
of the person before him. The uriadnik in the peas- 
ants' village has the same arbitrary powers of domi- 
ciliary visit as the highest police authorities have in 
the cities. He can invade the houses of the people 
without warning or preliminary preparation of any 
kind, at any hour of the da}' or night. On the grounds 
of his own suspicions, he is empowered to make. noctur- 
nal visitations, and to tumble people out of their beds, 
search their houses from roof to cellar, and play bull 
in the china-shop, generally, among the people. Even 
the most malignant Turkish zaptieh has no such powers 
as these. 

He is required by the powers at St. Petersburg to 
exercise the same paternal authority over the every- 
day affairs of the people as villagers, as they do in a 
national sense. His duties embrace such supervisory 
tasks as compelling the moujiks to throw open their 
windows for purposes of ventilation, to keep their floors 



I40 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

swept clean, and all manner of sanitary and inquisi- 
torial inspection. In theory, this sort of inspection is 
no doubt rather to be commended than otherwise ; the 
trouble is, that not one Russian in ten thousand is fit 
to be intrusted with powers that practically leave the 
people at his mercy. The writer has slept in rooms in 
Russian villages where the windows had evidently not 
been opened from one year's end to another, for venti- 
lation seems as unnecessary and uncongenial to a 
moujik, and even to many Russians of considerable 
education, as to a mole. 

The " best room," In nearly every village traktir we 
stayed at over night, was notoriously in need of being 
thrown open for ventilation by the uriadnik. The 
writer found the air in them, that had been boxed up 
all summer, so insupportable that I used to go and 
sleep, by preference, under the shed with the horses. 
Sascha, however, didn't seem to care ; or, at all events, 
it seemed to his Russian mind " so much like a moujik 
to sleep with the horses," that he preferred the dangers 
of suffocation in foul air. I expected to get up some 
morning and find him a ghastly corpse ; but, somehow, 
he survived to the end. 

It is not the proprietors of traktirs, however, not the 
gentleman whose cellar contains barrels of vodka, and 
who owns a half dozen samovars, always ready to be 
steamed up for the making of tea, that ever feels 
the inconvenience of the inquisitorial powers of the 
uriadnik. In one village, where the traktir sleeping- 
room had to all appearances been sealed up since 
winter, we heard a queer story of a moujik whose 
window had been thrown open nearly every da}^ during 



SCENES ON THE ROAD. 141 

the long bitter winter by an over-zealous uriadnik, in 
this case over-zealous for reasons that would not be 
very difficult to guess. 

One hardly knows what quarter to turn to for the 
responsibility of the uriadnik. Considered apart from 
the motive that prompted his creation and distribution 
among the peasantry, the Russian government cer- 
tainly committed no heinous crime in organizing a 
rural constablery, a privilege well within the rights 
of the most liberal of governments. Considering also 
the criminal indifference of the moujiks in sanitary 
matters, one can hardly blame the authorities for 
ordering summary lessons to be given them in ele- 
mentary sanitation and the like. Here, however, the 
tolerable ends ; and despotism begins with the right 
of domiciliary visit, without warrant or responsibility. 

But the chief responsibility for the evil reputation 
that attaches itself to their office, rests on the uriadniks 
themselves. And the underlying explanation is to be 
found in the lamentable fact that it is quite out of the 
question to find in Russia a body of men equal to the 
moral obligations of an honest performance of the 
uriadnik's duties. Were the entire tribe in possession 
of the field to be suddenly seized and hanged, and a 
fresh batch of average subjects of the Czar told off to 
fill their places, in six months the new gang would be 
as ripe for the hangman's noose as their predecessors. 

As a general thing, the uriadniks content themselves 
with accepting small bribes, which are given to them 
by people by way of propitiation, in order to be 
allowed to live in peace, and to blackmailing such 
persons as seem to be reluctant and unmanageable in 



1 4 2 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

the matter of bribes. There arc uriadniks, however, 
who, like the domovois on the 30th March, are given 
to fits of wanton deviltry, seemingly out of spontane- 
ous and irrepressible exultation over the opportunities 
of their position. Stories are current of uriadniks en- 
tering moujiks' houses, and, on the ground of defective 
sanitary practices, upsetting jars of milk and tubs of 
picked cucumbers on to the floor. 

In many of the villages south of Tula, one of the 
standing precautions against fire that the moujiks are 
required to maintain is to keep ready to hand, beside 
the water-buckets, axes, etc., previously mentioned, a 
swab attached to a long pole, which is to be dipped in 
water for flogging a blazing roof. An uriadnik is said 
to have once discovered attached to one of these fire 
poles, instead of the regulation swab, a dead magpie, 
which the owner of the house had fastened there as a 
precaution against witches. The zealous ofificer was 
naturally indignant, and determined to make an ex- 
ample of the offender that would be remembered for 
some time, carried it into the house and added it, 
feathers, corruption, and all, to the kettle of cabbage 
soup which the house-wife was boiling for the family 
dinner. As the magpie is a bird which was cursed 
centuries ago by a Moscow metropolitan, and is there- 
fore unholy, the kettle of soup had to be thrown away. 

But to return to the narrative of our own experi- 
ences on the road, our first uriadnik, who had turned 
up in so curious a manner at the exact rnoment when 
we could least afford to have anything to do with 
gentlemen of his kidney, as though uriadniks had the 
faculty of scenting from afar the vulnerable points of 



SCEATES ON THE ROAD. 143 

the rest of mankind, as buzzards scent from astonish- 
ing distances a carcass, turned out to be a reasonable 
sort of a chap after all. After considerable bargaining 
and casual references to the smallness of an uriadnik's 
salary, he finally accepted the trifling sum of three 
rubles, in consideration of which he would close his 
eyes to the fact that Sascha had no passport at all and 
mine was '^ irregular." The least we could do to show 
our appreciation of this extremely moderate demand 
was to take him into the traktir and set up a friendly 
samovar of tea. 



CHAPTER IX. 

INTO MALO RUSSIA. 

ON Sunday morning, July 13, we rode into the pro- 
vincial capital of Kursk ; and applied at the police 
station for a renewal of Sascha's passport. Strange to 
say, we were not received with anything beyond a mild 
and reasonable degree of suspicion by the police 
authorities of Kursk. The population of Kursk, how- 
ever, is pre-eminently Orthodox, and the principal busi- 
ness of the police officials being, in consequence, of a 
monotonously routine character, their bumps of suspi- 
cion are of less abnormal development than in localities 
intellectually wider awake. The chief features of the 
police station were the vast number of documents 
piled on the tables and desks, and an exceedingly pom- 
pous gentleman, whom we immediately decided must 
be no less a personage than the Governor-General, but 
who afterward turned out to be the assistant chief of 
police, with a salary of, perhaps, 2000 rubles a year, or 
$20 a week. 

One of the stock grievances that the Russians have 
against the Germans, is, that a German officer, with the 
salary of a journeyman tailor, will assume airs and ape 
the hauteur of a prince with an enormous income. It 
must not, therefore, be supposed that in speaking of 
the tremendous personalities seen among the police 
officers of the Russian service, that these worthy gen- 

144 



INTO MALO RUSSIA. 145 

tlemen are guilty of imitating the people whom, of all 
others in the world, they most cordially hate. It is 
true that they also sometimes outshine princes with 
enormous incomes, while drawing the salaries of jour- 
neymen tailors, but they manage to do it in a different 
way from that of the Germans. The difference is, 
that whereas the German ofificial manages to do it on 
his salary, it cannot be reiterated too often that the 
salary of a Russian police ofificer has very little bearing, 
indeed, on the size of his income. 

But all this has nothing whatever to do Avith the 
portly and theatrical gentleman whose personality 
made the police station of Kursk a memorable spot on 
our ride ; he being, no doubt, an exceptionally honest 
and trustworthy official. Far be it from the writer to 
express the smallest suspicion to the contrary, seeing 
that the gentleman in question, instead of taking a 
cynically suspicious interest in us, appeared chiefly de- 
sirous of exhibiting, for our edification, the pompous 
and portentous aspects of human vanity, thereby hop- 
ing to make such an impression on our minds as would 
cause us to remember him to the end of our lives. 
That he succeeded in this, seems very probable, since, 
whenever my mind happens to revert to the subject of 
the Russian police, the figure that invariably looms up 
in the foreground is that of a remarkably pompous 
gentleman, six feet or more in height, weighing 400 
pounds, and clad, July 13, in a heav}^ gi*^y ulster over- 
coat, warm enough for January 13, that reached to the 
floor, who issued from the inner sanctiiui sanctorum of 
the Kursk police station, and startled the numerous 
underlings about the room nearly out of their skins, by 



14^ THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

stamping impatiently with his foot. Having startled 
the scribes, secretaries, and policemen in this manner, 
the assistant police master beamed inquiringly in our 
direction a moment through his spectacles and then 
passed out. 

In Kursk, as in most provincial Russian cities, the 
motive that prompts anybody to seriously take up their 
residence in it is a positive enigma to a foreigner. In 
summer the people seem to exist chiefly for the purpose 
of assembling every evening in a little public garden, 
illumined with colored lamps, where they circle round 
and round a fountain and peer into each other's faces 
to the music of a military band, kindly provided by the 
courtesy of His Excellency the Governor-General of 
the province. On this particular Sunday evening there 
were to be extraordinary doings in the little garden, in 
virtue of which a small admission fee was charged. 
Rockets and bombs, which exploded and hissed in fiery 
flight about 6 o'clock P.M., announced to the city that 
the performances for the evening had begun. 

We made our way thither and mingled with the 
gathering throng. We called for tea and cigarettes at 
the garden restaurant, and, seated at a table, watched 
the proceedings with considerable interest. There was 
a sack-race around the fountain for an accordion ; and 
any number of abortive efforts on the part of men and 
boys to climb to the summit of a greased pole, the 
prize being in this case a samovar. The proprietors of 
the entertainment seemed to have taken good care that 
the pole should be so thoroughly covered with grease 
that they would have been quite safe even had they 
put up a prize of a million rubles. 



INTO MALO RUSSIA. 147 

There were more rockets and bombs, and then 
everybody paused in their circular promenade around 
the fountain to witness the dispatch of a tissue-paper 
balloonlet. At the flight of the little messenger to the 
clouds there was an universal clapping of hands, and 
everybody looked supremely happy. All then resumed 
the serious business of walking round and round. 
There were a good many ladies, the elite of Kursk, and 
a good many more who seemed to be even more ele- 
gant ladies than the real ladies ; some were pretty, and 
a good many more owed their pretensions to the same 
to the kindly influence of the colored lamps and the 
charitable twilight of the ending day. 

The military and the police were in the majority 
among the gentlemen, and private citizens seemed to 
be nowhere. Our friend, the assistant chief, was very 
much on hand, overcoat suspended cavalierly from his 
shoulders like a Spanish cloak, he, evidently, having 
better use for his arms than to thrust them in the 
sleeves. The arms were utilized as he walked, — not 
round and round, as everybody else was doing, but at 
eccentric angles, from one part of the garden to another, 
for the purpose of greeting his many friends with a 
glad and sudden surprise — utilized to bulge out the 
coat to such ample breadth that he seemed to require 
as much space as a full half dozen ordinary, private 
subjects of the Czar. 

The greater part of the following morning was spent 
in endeavoring to overcome the prodigious difficulties 
of dispatching a valise off by rail to Ekaterinoslav. By 
means of a vast deal of patience, and efforts that came 
near being superhuman, we succeeded in eventually 



148 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

getting the railway employees to exchange a* receipt 
for our money, and to take the responsibility of for- 
warding the valise. There were no suspicions here, 
however, to overcome — nothing but red tape ; skeins of 
that precious claptrap commodity having to be un- 
raveled at eight different desks and departments ere a 
common traveler's valise could be sent away. 

At the police station we obtained, for rubles, a 
genuine Russian responsibility-shirking document for 
my companion ; a sort of a " house-that-Jack-built " 
paper, stating that he had come there and said he had 
lost his passport, which he said he had obtained in 
Moscow, in which city he had said he resided, and in 
which city he had said he had received his education ; 
together with a whole string of other *' saids," but 
which as a passport was of no account whatever. 

South of Kursk we began to find a decided and 
exceedingly welcome improvement in the interiors of 
the people's houses. Here and there we were, at first, 
astonished to find houses that were clean and sweet 
within, and before reaching Kharkoff we were among 
a people who whitewash their interiors every six 
weeks, an improvement indeed upon the moujiks of 
the northern forests. We were getting into the famous 
''black earth region," and a change, too, came over the 
life to be seen in the fields. Men were harrowing 
newly plowed fields with as many as four harrows 
strung one behind another ; and on the road we met 
single teamsters in charge of as many as ten telegas. 

Wheat, rye, and oat harvest was in progress, and 
the fields were alive with moujiks and their wives and 
children, all taking a hand. As a general thing, the 



INTO MALO RUSSIA. 149 

grain was cut with cradles, swung by the men, and the 
women did the binding. There were, however, many 
females who wielded reaping hooks. Regular camps 
were formed in the fields, since the fields were often 
many versts away from the villages ; and a novel fea- 
ture of the camps would be the babies in swinging 
cribs suspended to rude tripods, and the toddlers next 
in size taking care of them. Occasionally might be 
seen the mothers, leaving their reaping or binding to 
kneel beside the cribs and indulge themselves and in- 
fants, the one as truly gratified to give as the other to 
receive. 

Near the town of Oboiyan, both men and horses 
came near scoring a catastrophe in a stream with a 
bottom of quicksand. Texas, being the livelier horse 
of the two, managed to scramble out almost before he 
was in ; but Sascha's animal got fairly into it, and 
whilst plunging about pitched his rider heels over head 
into the sand and water. Luckily both horse and 
rider escaped with no greater damage than a wetting 
and a fright. 

Beyond Oboiyan the northern moujik and his red 
shift began to gradually fall itito the background, and 
the white-shirted peasants of Little Russia to take his 
place. The moujik of Malo (Little) Russia cuts a less 
picturesque figure in the fields than his Muscovite con- 
freres of the north. In the fields of the forest zone 
the red specks conjured up the comparison of poppies, 
and in our gayer moods it was by this floral title that 
we would call one another's attention to them. But 
by no stretch of the imagination, nor by any enchant- 
ment born of distance, would it be possible to call the 



150 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

moujik of Malo Russia a flower. His raiment consists 
of a coarse white shirt and loose black trousers, top 
boots, and almost any kind of a hat that comes his way. 

'* Poppies " were yet reasonably numerous, however ; 
and at noon on July 11, we halted for refreshments at 
a wayside traktir, kept by a very energetic old lady, 
who immediately took us into her confidence in regard 
to the laziness and all-round worthlessness, of a young 
gentleman in a red shirt to whom she bore the relation- 
ship of mother-in-law. The old lady was one of the 
singularly few persons I came across in Russia who 
seemed to have positive, rather than negative, qualities 
of mind and body ; and almost without asking us what 
we wished to eat, she set about making us a big 
omelette, and boiling potatoes. Her son-in-law, she 
avowed, was the disappointment of her life. She was 
a farmer as well as proprietor of the traktir, and her 
ambition had been to secure a husband for her daugh- 
ter who would make a success of the farm whilst she 
attended to the traktir. As it turned out, she and her 
daughter had to perform most of the work, whilst the 
son-in-law did little beyond eating what they earned, 
drinking vodka, and sleeping on top of the stove. 

When we rode up, both daughter and son-in-law 
were out in the harvest field ; but the old lady assured 
us that it was the daughter alone who was doing any 
work. The son-in-law, she said, would be found 
snoozing beneath a shock of grain, pretending to be 
ill. 

A couple of hours after our arrival, the object of the 
old lady's wrathful denunciations turned up to sharpen 
his scythe and eat his dinner. He turned out to be a 



INTO MALO RUSSIA. 15 1 

poor little sallow-faced chap, who looked the very 
picture of misery. Suspecting that he was, probabl}', 
more sinned against than sinning, and she likely to turn 
out the finest specimen of '* mother-in-law " we should 
stumble upon, we asked him what was the trouble 
between him and his wife's mother. He replied that 
the old lady never gave him a moment's peace ; that 
she wanted him to work night and day, and was for- 
ever accusing him of being unkind to her daughter. 

*' My wife," said he, " is a good deal bigger and 
stronger than I am, as you can see for yourselves ; how, 
then, can I be unkind to her? Is it possible that a 
small, weak dog, should treat unkindly one that is 
half as big again, and twice as strong, as it ? " 

The mother sometimes kicked up such a row, he 
added, that there was nothing left for him but to try 
and take his own part ; in which case, sometimes, 
mother and daughter got him down on the floor and 
beat him. The daughter, who had also returned to the 
house, was of a truth the bigger and stronger of the 
two, and in the matter of energy she seemed a worthy 
chip off the maternal block. We asked the son-in-law 
why he didn't seek happiness in flight, and the*answer 
we received appeared to indicate that the motbers-in- 
law of Russia, like the police, have a powerful ally in 
the passport regulations of the country. He couldn't 
leave without a passport, he said, and this it would be 
quite impossible for him to obtain without the consent 
of his wife and mother-in-law. 

" But your mother-in-law wishes you were dead," we 
protested ; '' surely she would place no obstacle in the 
way, if you wished to clear out." 



152 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

" Pooh ! she only talks that way," returned he ; " the 
reason she wouldn't let me go is because I do more 
work than both of them together." 

This young man was well-nigh the last of the " pop- 
pies " seen in the roadside fields, though red-shirts are 
numerous in the cities of the South as well as in the 
northern part of the Empire. 

All through this part of the country an article in 
great request among the moujiks was paper for the 
making of rude cigarettes. Shepherds, particularly, 
would come running to the road from considerable dis- 
tances to beg pieces of paper. One day we asked one of 
these shepherds whether it was likely to be wet weather, 
the shepherds being regarded as the best weather- 
prophets in the country. His test, in reply to our 
query, was to moisten his forefinger with his mouth, 
then hold it up for a few seconds, — a primitive sort of 
barometer, indeed. 



CHAPTER X. 

SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 

ON the evening of July 19 we arrived in Kharkoff, 
a city of 200,000 inhabitants, and one of the uni- 
versity towns of Russia. About 3500 students find 
accommodation in its various institutions of learning. 
It is the metropolis of Little Russia ; and on its streets 
are seen more handsome women than in any other city 
of the Empire, save Warsaw. It has numerous splen- 
did churches, with interiors all ablaze with riches, and 
of its one hundred versts of streets, fifty versts are 
execrably paved and the other fifty not paved at all. 
This glaring difference between the wealthiness of 
the churches, and the poverty or indifference of the 
municipalities in Russian cities, was always a matter of 
controversy between myself and companion. His ex- 
planation was that the St. Petersburg government was 
actively at the back of the churches, whilst the cities 
had to look after their own streets. Special 'medals 
are given for donations of 5000 rubles and upward to 
churches, and as these medals are much coveted by 
wealthy merchants, who have no other means of ob- 
taining decorations, the churches simply roll in wealth. 
It seemed, indeed, that this ingenious method of coax- 
ing donations from wealthy parvenues, might with 
equally happy results be applied to the far more need- 

153 



1 5 4 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

ful improvement of the streets, which in all cities, save 
St. Petersburg, are simply abominable. 

We bought a Kharkofl morning paper of the date of 
our arrival in that city. It contained this delightfully 
accurate piece of news : 

Mr. Thomas Sveepos, an American gentleman who is riding on 
horseback from Moscow to the Black Sea, will leave Kursk this 
morning, e?t route to Kharkoff. He is accompanied by a Moscow 
student, A. Krega (Sascha's name was Kritsch). After complet- 
ing this novel undertaking, Mr. Sveepos intends riding around the 
world on a bicycle (!). 

On the way out of KharkofT we were honored for 
the space of a-couple of hundred yards with the com- 
pany of a gentleman with an exceedingly rusty coat, 
an exceedingly husky voice, and an exceedingly purple 
nose. His nationality was as uncertain as his gait, 
though we judged him to be a Russian of French or 
Italian descent. Seeing us pass by, he issued from a 
vodka-shop, and hailing us as " Franzositch corre- 
spondenta " offered, for the price of a drink of vodka, to 
sing us a song from Lermantoff. This tempting offer 
was not to be resisted, and so we immediately took him 
up, stipulating that he should sing it while keeping 
pace with us. Receiving his reward, he doffed his hat 
and, bidding us bon voyage, returned to wet his whistle 
in our honor, never doubting that we were '* Franzo- 
sitch correspondenta." 

That night we stumbled upon the only genuine ex- 
pression of hospitality, beside our hospitable reception 
at the country mansion of Count Tolstoi, that revealed 
itself to us on the journey, until I, after Sascha's re- 
turn, got among the Crimean Tartars. 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 155 

At the village of Babayi there was no postayali dvor, 
and the family of a Rostoff shipping agent, who were 
spending the summer there, offered us the hospitality 
of their datscha for the night, and in the morning in- 
sisted on us remaining a day to rest. It was in com- 
pany of this family that we paid our visit to the con- 
vent-monastery of Karashavitch, an account of which 
is found in later pages. In the summer nearly every 
Russian city family, who can afford the luxury, spend 
three or four months in the country. Here the ladies 
pass the warm period of summer in a life of well-nigh 
ideal lotus-eating. They take their meals under the 
trees about the grounds, and indulge their love of 
cigarettes and tea to the last " papyros," and the last 
cup, demanded by the limits of utter satisfaction. 
They gossip and read Zola, play cards, and take long 
drives in the family linega. 

If there is water near, they indulge frequently in 
swimming and wading in it, and get the waterman to 
row them about in his leaking wherry. In inland Rus- 
sia, boats always seem leaky, vehicles ramshackly, 
harnesses old and patchy, fences broken, hedges 
gappy, and indeed well-nigh everything out of joint. 

An interesting member of this hospitable family was 
a young man who wore the uniform of the Imperial 
navy. He had, to some extent, worked out his own 
career, and had entered upon it under very extraordi- 
nary circumstances. When he applied for admission to 
the naval academy, it was to discover that he was de- 
barred on account of being, according to the rules, one 
year over age. Nothing daunted, he, in the teeth of 
all persuasions as to the folly of so doing, wrote a letter 



15^ THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

direct to the Czar, stating his case, and begging that an 
exception might be made in his favor. To the astonish- 
ment of everybody, he received, fifteen days later, an 
Imperial document which secured to him the coveted 
permission to enter the academy. 

He had passed his examination and had been on 
several cruises in and about the Black, Mediterranean, 
and Red Seas. 

This young officer gave the writer an amusing insight 
into some of the mental conceptions of the Russian 
sailors and younger inferior officers. They liked the 
French sailors better than the English, he said, because 
the French sailors kissed them, whereas the English 
sailors were always punching their heads. There is, it 
seems, a species of personal assault familiarly known 
in the Russian navy as being " boxed by a John." 
English sailors are the " Johns," and boxing, as it is 
" understanded of the Russian sailors," appears to be 
less of a scientific operation and more of the pummel- 
ing order of assault and defense than is permissible by 
the actual rules of the ring. 

Once — this young officer and protege of the Czar 
went on to say — his vessel was stationed at Alexandria, 
at the same time that an English vessel was stationed 
there, and every day, sailors, after leave ashore, used to 
come aboard with blackened eyes and broken noses, 
all evidences of having been *' boxed by the Johns." 

My informant was a ver^ intelligent young Russian, 
but in common with a good many Russians, even of 
fair education, deep down among the bottom layers of 
his convictions and beliefs were scraps of fanaticism 
that belong to the days of Peter the Hermit, and seem 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 157 

startlingly curious in these days of well-nigh universal 
enlightenment among the Western nations. In speak- 
ing of the different navies, he seemed thoroughly con- 
scious of the superiority of the British navy over the 
Russian; "but," said he, "if a British ship were to 
attempt to run down a Russian ship, God would inter- 
fere on behalf of the Russians, and before the English 
ship could reach them it would go to the bottom." 

One can understand how the Russian authorities 
manage to foster such beliefs in the soldiers, who are 
never allowed to come under any outside influence, 
but it was something of a revelation to the writer, that 
a young officer who had knocked about in foreign 
ports should still seriously entertain such fanatical 
ideas as this. 

We were now fairly in Little Russia, and at Khar- 
koff we had reached the end of the broad chaiissc, 
which we had followed all the way from Moscow. 
The difficulty of finding our way across a country 
threaded with small roads that seemed to lead to 
nowhere in particular, during our first day out from 
Babayi, afforded Sascha exceptional opportunities for 
the display of one of his peculiarities of disposition. 
This peculiarity consisted of assuming the looks and 
the language of utter despair, on the smallest possible 
provocation. Any difficulty about finding the road, 
getting food to eat, or a place to pass the night, or the 
likelihood of being overhauled by the police about our 
passports, would bring from Sascha the exclamation, 
" Now what to do ? " with such a tremendous emphasis 
on the " what," that at first I used to look at him with 
astonishment, supposing him to be in a frame of n)ind 



158 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. ■ 

akin to that of a man who has just been sentenced to 
death. After no end of these " now what to do's," 
and an hour or so of floundering about in a sort of 
morass, we eventually struck a broad and well-defined 
road, though the roads were now nothing more than 
a broad swath of land across the country, preserved by 
the government as " the Czar's highway." 

We stayed that night at a postayali-dvor, where we 
experienced the welcome novelty of a clean white 
table-cloth, and clean pillows to repose our heads on, 
though we slept out of the house, Sascha in the stable, 
I by the side of a hay-rick in the orchard. The secret 
of the clean linen was, that the proprietor of the 
place had married a French governess, who seemed to 
have taken charge of the management by preference, as 
Frenchwomen in France delight in keeping shop. 
The contrast between her and the Russian women 
belonging to similar establishments along our road, 
was remarkably striking. The women were lazier and 
even more indifferent about getting us anything to eat, 
or putting themselves out of the way in any shape or 
manner for our accommodation, than were the men. 
And this churlish heedlessness of character gi*ew to be 
worse, and productive of more and more discomfort to 
us, as we progressed into the heart of Malo Russia. 
Here, we were among a people who could scarcely 
be got to give us a civil answer in reply to our 
questions about the road. The moujiks seemed 
particularly morose and disinclined to show us any 
courtesy. 

At Constantinograd, a small town, two days' ride 
south of Kharkoff, we were getting well into Malo 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 159 

Russia. The most striking feature of the landscape 
were big fields of sunflowers. 

All Russia nibbles sunflower seeds in its moments 
of leisure. Imas^ine half the citizens of the United 
States carrying, habitually, a supply of peanuts around 
in their pockets and nibbling them continually, and 
you have a hardly exaggerated idea of the ubiquitous 
part played by the sunflower seed in Russian life. In 
the circus, in the theater, in the ofiflces, the shops, the 
tea-houses, the city streets, the village door-stoop, 
men, women, girls and boys, peasants, nobles, mer- 
chants, soldiers — everybody, everywhere, nibble sun- 
flower seeds. 

It is to supply this universal taste that thousands of 
acres of those gorgeous flowers are cultivated on the 
northern border of Malo Russia. 

People who have only seen the big sunflower as a 
garden ornament can have but a dim conception of the 
magnificent sight afforded by a forty-acre field of tliese 
gorgeous yellow blossoms. I first saw a field of them 
in the morning, when every big round golden face, with- 
out an exception in all the myriads, was looking toward 
the east. The scene was striking, and suggested a 
vast multitude of floral Aztecs worshiping the morning 
sun. Not being acquainted with the habits of the 
sunflower I wondered all the morning whether all 
those worshipful faces would, in the evening, be turned 
toward the west. So I watched other fields as we rode 
along, and learned, what ev^ery other reader of these 
pages very likely knows already, that the sunflower 
always turns its face to the east. 

Here the mind naturally reverted to a period of the 



i6o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

past, when a slim gentleman in knee breeches, long 
hair, and with a big sunflower in his button-hole, 
emerged from the fogs of London to create a passing 
furore in America in favor of the floral monarch of the 
Little Russian steppes. 

The sunflower crop is one of the best paying in 
Russia. A good crop is worth, as it stands in the field, 
lOO rubles a dessiatine, or about $25 an acre. The 
seeds are sold by the farmer for one and a half to two 
rubles a pood. Then the merchants retail them for 
four rubles a pood, and at about every street crossing 
in Russian provincial cities are stands and peddlers 
with baskets, selling to the passers-by the product of 
the big sunflower. In the field the sunflowers are 
sowed in rows like the '* drilled corn " of the Kansas 
farmer, and, like corn, are cultivated and hilled up 
with shovel plows. 

The peasants of Little Russia seemed to be even 
more superstitious than the moujiks of the northern 
forests. Once we halted for noon at a little village 
when the men were all away at work. The fields be- 
longing to a village are often several versts away. So 
uneventful is the life of these people that the ap- 
pearance of a couple of strangers, on horseback, dressed 
differently from themselves, is an event of portentous 
possibilities. 

The woman from whom we demanded shelter and 
feed for our horses crossed herself several times and 
turned pale. She opened the gate, however, and 
brought us hay. Afraid to approach us, she placed 
the hay inside the gate and retreated. We went into 
the house to see about getting a samovar to make tea. 




tt&. 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. l6l 

The poor woman was quaking with fear, but was too 
frightened to oppose us in anything we might wish to 
do. The children avoided us and watched us furtively 
from a distance. 

On entering the house we failed to cross ourselves 
before the ikons, or holy pictures, in the corner. This 
sacrilegious omission struck new terror to the heart of 
our unwilling hostess, who decided then and there that 
we were a pair of antichrists, come to " steal away 
the souls of the family." She crossed herself several 
times whenever we spoke to her, and dispatched one 
of the children to summon a neighbor. 

The neighbor arrived, in the form of an ancient crone, 
who was probabl}^ the village znakharka, a mysterious 
individual to the villagers, half witch, half quack, but, 
to the better educated, wholly knave. After surveying 
us awhile and talking the matter over, the znakharka 
prescribed a piece of bread wet with holy water as the 
most likely thing to counteract any evil designs we 
might have on the household. 

On January 5 every year a quantity of water is con- 
veyed to the churches of Russia, where it is converted 
into holy water by the blessings of the priests. Every 
Orthodox Russian carries home a bottle of this water 
and keeps it in the house. It is supposed to be effi- 
cacious for many ailments, both bodily and spiritual. 

The poor woman now produced her precious bottle 
of holy Avater, and, pouring some on pieces of bread, 
gave a piece to each of the children and to a young 
calf that was in the room. She then ate a piece her- 
self. 

Her terror of us was so genuine that I bade Sascha 



1 62 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

try to calm her fears. He produced from his bosom 
the miniature ikon that had been given him by his 
mother at the beginning of the journey, and assured 
the woman that he also was a Christian. For a 
moment her suspicions were allayed, and for very 
thankfulness she knelt and crossed herself many times. 
Then it seemed to occur to her that Sascha's ikon was 
probably worn for purposes of deception ; why else 
had he not crossed himself when he first entered the 
house ? 

All her suspicions were intensified. Tears rolled 
down her cheeks. In vain Sascha tried to reassure her. 
Her house would burn down and the souls of the fam- 
ily would wither away as a consequence of our visit. 
When we departed she was afraid to take money di- 
rectly from my hand, but motioned us to lay it down. 

Thougli less superstitious than the women, the men 
regarded us with a different order of suspicion. To 
some we were mysterious strangers, spying out the 
country; toothers we were secret police. In either 
case we had sinister designs on the people. 

The most common form of suspicion was that we 
were secretly engaged in numbering the people and 
assessing the property for the purpose of increasing 
the taxes. An attempt to photograph a house pro- 
duced considerable excitement. To the peasants this 
was proof positive that aggressive measures, in the 
nature of heavier taxes, would be the outcome of our 
visit. The peasants themselves were as chary of the 
Kamaret as the most timid and suspicious of the East 
African tribes which the writer met the summer 
before. 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 163 

Their timidity and suspicions, it is fair to say, were 
not always the result of superstition. In some cases 
superstition and ignorance formed the groundwork of 
their objections, but their chief fears were that we 
were agents of the government. In one small village 
the people were so convinced that we were government 
spies secretly assessing their property that a delegation 
of elders waited on us and naively offered to pay us 
for undervaluing their belongings. The peasants are 
always in dread of some new scheme of squeezing • 
more money out of their pockets. The traveler finds 
among these people the same dread of government 
officials as in Turkey, Persia, China, and other countries 
where the officials are notoriously corrupt, though not 
in the same degree. The evidence of bad government, 
which finds expression in the servile prostitution of 
the peasantry before the minions of the governing 
power, is seen to the best advantage in the Armenian 
villages of Asiatic Turkey. The arrival of a Turkish 
officer in a village creates as much consternation 
among the people as if they were rats in a pit, and the 
man in uniform the terrier, who is heavily backed to 
kill them all in a certain length of time. Nine tenths 
of them are invisible from the time of his arrival to his 
departure ; the other tenth hover about, watchful and 
alert, to anticipate his every wish. The state of affairs 
in Russia is a decided improvement on this ; but when 
the worst fears of the peasants take the form of sus- 
picion that the stranger who comes among them is 
an officer of the government, something evidently is 
wrong. 

One sees less of the military element in provincial 



1 6 4 THR UGH R US SI A OiV A M US TA NG. 

Russia than might have been expected. There are 
camps at every good-sized town — a tented field — for in 
Russia the army goes into camp all summer. But gar- 
rison towns are few and far apart, and it is only by 
bearing in mind the vast extent of Russian territory 
that one can come to accept as probable the numerical 
claims of its army. 

It is curious to see soldiers in uniform working in 
the harvest fields or mending the roads. The pay of 
the Russian soldier is only seventy kopecks a month — 
less than Uncle Sam pays his boys in blue per day. 
As an offset, however, the Russians are permitted to 
hire out as laborers or artisans — anything they can find 
to do. In the cities, the soldiers of the garrison 
usually have the preference over others as supers in 
the theaters, and among them are often found amateur 
actors, singers, and musicians of considerable talent. 
In the provinces they work at harvesting, plowing, 
ditch-digging, or anything the large landed proprietors 
can find for them to do. 

In every village are young men who have returned 
home from their three years' military duty. The Rus- 
sian peasant dreads going into the army, but when he 
returns is immensely proud of his service. He then 
considers himself far superior to those whom three 
years before he would have given an ear to change 
places with in order to remain at home. The secret of 
his exaltation is that while in the barracks he has 
received a rudimentary education, and knows a thing 
or two more than the rustics about him. 

The military burden, apart from the expenses of 
keeping up the army, seems to sit lightly enough on 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 165 

the population. Neither the eldest son, nor a son on 
whom depends the support of his parents, is required 
to serve. The young man who can pass a certain 
examination is required to serve only one year in the 
regular army as a volunteer recruit. 

Between Kharkoff and El^aterinoslav, the crops were 
a failure. From April i to June i there had been no 
rain, and all along our way were fields of grain too poor 
to repay the expense of cutting. The country seemed 
to be farmed mostly by large proprietors; villages were 
becoming scarce and the mansions of big land-owners 
became a prominent feature of the landscape. Jews 
and sectarians began to be more prominent in the towns. 

At Constantinograd, the proprietor of the traktir was 
a Jew, and on the wall of our room hung a steel por- 
trait of Sir Moses Montefiore. This portrait of Sir 
Moses is to be seen on the wall of every Jewish family 
in Russia, who can afford the luxury of a picture. 

It was not always easy to distinguish, readil}% Hebrew 
proprietors by their features, in Malo Russia, for many 
of the Little Russians themselves are dark and Israel- 
itish in appearance ; but the absence of ikons and the 
presence of the portrait of Sir Moses IMontefiore in the 
room would immediatel}'' put us right. 

However it may be with the Jews of Russia as a body, 
the writer is bound to do them the justice of recording 
the fact that such few specimens as I came in contact 
with, chiefly keepers of village traktirs, were a decided 
improvement, as regards cleanliness and willingness to 
put themselves to trouble, on the Orthodox traktir-keep- 
ers. And only in one instance did it seem to me that 
they were in the slightest degree ''smaller" and more 



1 6 6 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

grasping as to kopecks. As between the two, though 
both were decidedly picayunish in their dealings from 
a Western point of view, if the writer ever got satis- 
factory accommodation in return for the charges made, 
it would be from the Jew proprietors rather than the 
Russian. The Jews wore, certainly, shrewder, but 
not a whit more grasping and inclined to petty exac- 
tions; and the superior spirit of eiUerprise was at least 
productive of a decent place to sleep and something 
beyond weak tea and ancient hard boiled eggs to eat. 

The}^ were suspicious, however ; even more so than 
the moujiks. At this time the Russian government 
was giving one of. its periodical twists to the Jewish 
screw, and these people were comically suspicious that 
we might be secret agents of the government. Some- 
times this continual suspicion of both Russians and 
Je\ys would grow irksome, and the annoyance of it 
would be aggravated by the boorish reluctance of a 
Russian traktir-keeper to move in the matter of satisfy- 
ing the cravings of a traveler's hunger ; and the hunger 
and the annoyance would give rise to vengeful imagin- 
ings, in which the Jews were permitted to ruin all the 
moujiks, and the moujiks then permitted to rise up 
and massacre all the Jews ! The condition of a man's 
stomach has more to do with his frame of mind than 
many people who have never known semi-starvation 
are aware of. 

Near Pereschepinsk men were ducking, in a marshy 
tract of country, with old Catherine II match-locks, 
and huge flint-locks tied to stakes driven in the mud. 
Others were ambushed among the reeds and flags with 
flails, with which they smote the unwary quackers with 



SUSPICIOUS FEASANTS. 167 

unerring blows, born of long practice. Wild ducks 
were offered us at seven kopecks apiece ; but it was 
useless to attempt to get one cooked. By this time I 
was well-nigh beginning to believe that the real secret 
of why the lower orders of Russia live on rye bread, 
salted cucumbers, and stewed buckwheat, is because 
they are too abominably lazy and shiftless to cook 
anything else. 

All through this region of drouth, rye bread seemed 
to be abundant and cheap, while oats or horse-feed of 
any kind was difficult to obtain. It was the famous 
" black earth zone," where wheat and rye seemed to 
have driven out oats. At first Texas turned up his 
snip nose disdainfully at rye bread, and looked around 
with an almost human look of inquiry for oats, but he 
eventually came down to it, merely stipulating that 
the first couple of feeds be lightly sprinkled with 
salt. 

At one of the postayali dvors we found the proprietor 
a comparatively rich land-owner, a young man whose 
father had left him 500 dessiatines of land. He and 
his better half were about the worthiest couple we had 
happened across on the road, for traktir-keepers. Our 
bed this night was in the hay-loft, and an hour or so 
after I had returned, Sascha made his appearance in 
such a jovial frame of mind that I decided he and the 
host must have been drinking one another's health 
with something more of ardor than discretion. Inquir- 
ing the cause of his hilarity, however, I learned to my 
astonishment that it was all because our genial host 
had rewarded him for the yarns he had been spinning 
about our experiences on tlie ride, by using the en- 



1 6 8 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

dearing "thou," instead of the more formal "you," in 
talking to him. 

At Novo-Moskovski we once again came under the 
meddlesome suspicions of the police. The " lion " of 
Novo-Moskovski was a wooden church with nine small 
domes, which had been put together without usii\g a 
single nail. Everything was done by dovetailing and 
with wooden pins. We were looking at this church, 
after having put up our horses at the postayali dvor, 
when up stepped a police officer and demanded to see 
our passports. They were, of course, declared to be 
"irregular." Mine was not in language that they 
could understand, and Sascha's house-that-Jack-built 
document was no passport at all. 

Though an ispravnik, and several "niks" higher in 
the scale of the Tchin than our useful friends the uriad- 
niks, this official was afraid to peep into the little 
view-finder of my Kamaret, and he was thoroughly 
mystified by the pictures in a copy of an American 
magazine, Avhich he discovered in my saddle-bags. 
His suspicions of this magazine were, indeed, so remark- 
ably comical that it was with great difficulty I could 
keep my countenance. He demanded a minute ex- 
planation of several plans of Japanese theaters that it 
contained, evidently suspecting that they might be 
plans of Russian forts. 

Another of his suspicions was directed at a Russian 
cap which the writer had found preferable in the hot 
sun, to the one I might otherwise have worn. The 
fact that a foreigner was wearing a Russian cap smote 
him as an additional reason why we should be 
regarded with suspicion, and subjected to annoyance. 



SUSPICWL'S PEASANTS. 169 

After detaining us till eleven o'clock next morning, 
they announced that the chief objection to allowing 
us to proceed on our way was Sascha's house-that-Jack- 
built paper. This was a plain enough bid for a 
modest contribution to the official pocket, and as the 
quickest way of settling the difficulty we applied for a 
paper that would enable him to avoid any further in- 
terference. The result was that we obtained another 
responsibility-dodging document, stating that Sascha 
had appeared to this police-station with a paper which 
he said he had obtained at Kurskh, where he had said 
that he had lost his passport, which he said he had 
obtained in Moscow, in which city he had said he re- 
sided, and in which city he had said he received his 
education, etc., etc., etc. (!) 



CHAPTER XI. 

NUNS AND CONVENTS. 

BEFORE continuing our ride toward the Crimea, 
let me ask the reader to retrace a few versts of our 
road, and visit a Russian convent. 

A few miles south of KharkofT is the convent 
monastery of Karashavitch. It occupies a picturesque 
knoll overlooking the rich bottom lands of the River 
Donetz, and contains quarters for both monks and 
nuns. Sascha and I were enjoying the hospitality of 
the Rostoff merchant's family before spoken of, and it 
being Sunday we paid a visit to the monastery. 

Monks I had visited in the Alexandra Nevski Mon- 
astery at St. Petersburg, and the Nicholai Oograshinski 
Monastery near Moscow, but this was the first oppor- 
tunity that had presented itself of seeing something of 
the manners and custom of the " brides of Christ " in 
holy Russia. In most countries it is difficult for a 
male biped to gain admittance into a convent,. but the 
holy Sisters of Russia are extremely liberal in their 
ideas; and the monastery of Karashavitch, the grounds 
being occupied in part by monks, was as easy of access 
to one sex as to the other. Its very name, Karasha, 
in fact, signifies literally, " all right." 

We timed our visit so as to see the nuns at dinner, 
which we were told would be the most interesting 
event of the day. We arrived, however, in time for 
the morning service in the church as well, A visit to 

170 



NUNS AND CONVENTS. 171 

a Russian monastery carries the visitor back at once to 
the Middle Ages, and no sooner were we inside the 
irregular high wall that crowned the summit of the 
knoll than our eyes were riveted on a scene worthy of 
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame." 

A nun in black robes and black velvet helmet-shaped 
head-dress was up in the open belfry of the church 
ringing a clamorous peal of three bells, by means of 
ropes manipulated in a curiously skillful manner, with 
both hands and one foot. One of the bells was a regu- 
lar " Big Ben," with a funereal bo?m that must have 
been the terror of aerial demons for twenty miles 
around; and in the task of putting them to flight this 
bell was ably seconded by its lesser, but by no means 
small brother, the middle bell of the peal. The little 
bell joined in with a quickening " tinkle-tinkle-tinkle," 
voicing its imperative mandates half a dozen times to 
Big Ben's one, as though, in the work of routing the 
enemy, it was determined not to be outdone by the 
others. Lucifer himself would have stood no chance 
against all three, and even had he braved the bells, a 
glance- at the weird-looking figure in the belfry would 
have convinced him of the folly of bravado in the pres- 
ence of so skillful and vigorous a holy Sister. 

The black figure against the blue summer sky, Avith 
black-draped arms outstretched and one foot working 
a treadle, the whole body bending and swaying in 
muscular unison with the curious medley of the bells — 
could that possibly be a woman ? A' woman it was, 
however — one of the older nuns; and her performance 
in this belfry was worth traveling half across Russia to 
see. 



172 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

In response to her summons, the shaded walks of the 
monastery grounds suddenly became alive with black- 
robed figures. They were the nuns and novices flock- 
ing to church from all directions, singly and by twos. 
Theijpelts of the black frocks were well up between the 
shoulders, and worldly gewgaws, save black ribbon, 
had been rigorously eschewed. 

Only the head-dress could be called fantastic. The 
older Sisters wore close-fitting helmets of black velvet 
and the novices a tall, pointed head-dress of the same 
material, in shape not unlike that of the Pomeranian 
Guards of Prussia. A pardonable concession to the 
world, the flesh, and the devil was permitted in the 
display of remarkably fine lengths of hair. Russian 
women have their fair share of this chief glory of the 
sex, and the young novices were allowed to indulge in 
single braids which, like a Chinaman's queue, often 
fell below the waist, and were tied at the end with little 
bows of black ribbon. 

There was nothing noteworthy in the service except 
the singing. Imagine the of^ces of the priests in a 
Roman Catholic church performed by the older nuns, 
and you have a sufificiently clear idea of this service. 

But the singing was soft and sweet and sad, — the 
plaintive melody that characterizes the popular songs 
of the Russian people, chastened and refined. 

As before stated, most Russian popular songs are 
tales of sorrow, bewailing the loss of a sweetheart, or 
the death of cherished hallucinations, and their music 
is a melancholy plaint. "John Brown's Body," in 
Russia, instead of a humorous production, would have 
been a veritable dirge. In sacred music it is the same. 



NUNS AND CONVENTS. 173 

While our churches ring with songs of triumph, praise, 
and glory, the churches of Russia are filled with sweet, 
sad plaints for mercy. 

By purchasing a small ikon from a grateful little old 
Sister who kept a stall for the sale of holy pictures, we 
gained admittance to the dining-room to see the nuns 
at dinner. 

They filed in from church or from their cells, greet- 
ing each other affectionately as they came into the 
room, and stood up in rows along the walls. While 
waiting the dinner hour they chatted and smiled, and 
laid their heads together, and formed little gossiping 
groups, the queer head-dresses bobbing and turning, 
bowing and nodding. The novices had donned white 
aprons. 

The table being ready, the nuns clustered together, 
and, turning their faces toward Jerusalem, sang a 
paternoster, afterward taking their seats. Four nuns 
had to eat from one plate and drink from one glass. 
Each had a square piece of black bread, a tiny cellar of 
salt, and a wooden spoon. Decanters of kwass were 
on the tables, and seemed to be in more demand than 
anything else. Whether they were thirsty after their 
singing, or whether the kwass was irresistible in itself, 
those who got a first chance at the decanters gave 
small heed to the rights of their sisters, many of whom 
got next to none. Kwass, black bread and salt, cab- 
bage soup, and a porridge of grain was the meal. Four 
of the plumpest of the young novices were waiters, 
while others handed in the bowls and dishes at a door. 
Throughout the meal one of the nuns stood and read 
aloud from the lives of the Saints, while another also 



174 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTAXG. 

stood ill a corner as a punishment for some slight 
breach of discipline. 

It was all very interesting, and when, on returning 
to St. Petersburg after the ride to the Crimea, a lady 
invited me to accompany her to one of the largest con- 
vents in Russia, I readily accepted. This was the 
Monastery of Novodaiveetsa, in the eastern suburbs of 
St. Petersburg. This visit turned out to be even more 
interesting than the other. 

We took with us a little tea-set to present to a nun 
with whom my friend was acquainted, and who, it was 
believed, would show us over the place. A ninth-day 
service for a young lady who had been buried in the 
convent cemetery was going on in the church when we 
arrived. There was the same plaintive singing by a 
choir of novices as at Karashavitch, only, this being 
a mass for the dead, two patriarchal priests performed 
the rites. The head-dresses were of a hussar, rather 
than Pomeranian Guard pattern, and veils of black 
crape flowed to the ground. In one corner, facing the 
choristers, was an old lady weeping bitterly, the mother 
of the young woman for whom the service was held. 
One of the nuns presented her with a loaf of holy bread. 

Sister Salavioff, recognizing my companion, came 
over and kissed her several times, first on one cheek, 
then on the other, and saluted the author with a bow. 
Hers was a pale face, and, save for a roguish twinkle 
in a pair of remarkably lively black eyes, might have 
served as a model for a typical holy Sister. After the 
service it was her duty to extinguish the candles, when 
she said she would show us everything worth seeing in 
the convent. 



NUNS AND CONVENTS. 1 75 

We followed the priests and the choristers to the grave 
of the dead girl to see the services there. The grave 
was hidden beneath piles of flowers and wreaths, and 
the priests swung censers over it as they led the 
services. 

"God have mercy upon our sister's soul," wailed the 
nuns in the same melancholy yet melodious strain. 

The poor mother and a small gathering of friends 
stood at one end of the mound of fading flowers, and 
wept and made signs of the Cross. The services being- 
ended, a big dish of boiled rice was produced and set 
on the grave. Everybody ate a spoonful, and the rest 
was scattered over the grave, 

This cemetery was the most beautifully kept and 
interesting I had ever seen. Sister Salavioff showed 
us over it, explaining everything. In their family life 
the Russians are an affectionate people, and they do 
their best to follow their departed friends into the 
spirit world. " They thinlcmore of the dead than of the 
living," said my companion. 

And, indeed, this convent cemetery was to me a reve- 
lation of how far superstition and religion combined 
may carry people in their striving to penetrate the 
mysteries of the future life and link them with the 
present. The ambition of every Russian is to be buried 
in a monastery, and those who are rich enough invari- 
ably find a resting place within this sacred boundary. 

Rich merchants, who are, in Russia, often as igno- 
rant and superstitious as the peasants, leave large sums 
of money to the monasteries in return for choice burial 
plots and future masses for the welfare of their souls. 

A grave costs from 500 to 1000 rubles for positions 



1 7 6 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUST A NG. 

near the cemetery church, down to 50 rubles for remote 
situations near the outer wall. 

Over many of the graves are built beautiful little 
houses, chiefly of glass and ornamental marble or iron, 
like small summer-houses. These houses are cosily fur- 
nished with rugs, tables, chairs, etc., and the windows 
are embellished with fancy curtains or made of stamed 
glass. Photographs of the dead hang on the rear wall, 
wliich is not of glass, and sometimes busts stand on a 
shelf. Easter eggs, religious books, and other memen- 
toes of the departed are on the table. Pots of flowers 
stand around, and ikons and holy pictures hang up or 
stand on a shelf as in the houses of the living. 

In one of these houses sat a woman reading a book, 
and with a samovar of tea on the table. '' A disconso- 
late widow," explained Sister Salavioff, " who comes 
twice a week to spend the day in reading or.knitting, 
and drinking tea in the company of her departed hus- 
band." 

In another house were a family party, also with a 
samovar, and luncheon brought in a basket. Some of 
the family were smoking cigarettes. They, too, were 
enjoying the company of such members of the family 
as had " gone before." 

These houses over the graves are peculiarly inter- 
esting, as being a distinct survival of heathenism, 
which the Russians have clung to and shaped to their 
conceptions of the Christian religion. The pagan 
Slavs used to build wooden huts on the graves of their 
ancestors for the accommodation of the spirit wlien it 
chose to return to earth and visit the body, and also 
for the use of the relatives when they came to mourn 



NUNS AND CONVENTS. I77 

on the grave. In spite of ecclesiastical prohibition, 
the peasants of remote districts still erect log huts on 
the graves, and in the case of those who have rubles 
to bestow on the monks and nuns, full liberty to indulge 
this ancient custom seems to be given. 

Eating from a dish of rice around the grave, and 
scattering the remainder over it, is likewise a relic of 
paganism. The heathen Slavs used to feast and revel 
on the graves of the newly buried and leave portions 
of the food for the use of the departed. In modern 
Russia the feasting is observed at home after the visit 
to the grave, but the formal eating and scattering of 
the rice is decidedly pagan. Whether the old heathen 
builders of the wooden huts would have thought the 
structures in the Novodaiveetsa monastery a sign of 
degeneracy, as they certainly would the substitution of 
the dish of rice for the old feasting and carousing, is a 
speculation. But there is a wide difference, indeed. 
Many of the houses cost from io,ooo to 15,000 rubles, 
and the finest one in the cemetery cost 30,000 rubles. 

Our guide explained further that one of the smaller 
sources of the convent's revenue was the furnishing of 
samovars of hot water to relatives who come to drink 
tea with the dead in these houses. Many of the 
houses were occupied every da}' in the year for a few 
hours by one or another of the relatives, it being 
looked upon as a special mark of love to the departed 
to visit and drink tea with them every day. These 
visitors bring tea and sugar, but find it more conven- 
ient to obtain samovars of hot water from the nuns. 

On saints' days, name days, etc., candles are burned, 
and tapers in cups of holy oil are always burning. The 



17^ THROUGH RUSSIA O.V A MUSTANG. 

nuns are paid from ten rubles a year upward for water- 
ing the flowers and keeping each grave trim. 

The shafts over such graves as had no house were 
often quite as interesting. A photograph or crayon 
portrait of the deceased is usually set in the monu- 
ment and covered with glass. Or there is a bust or 
small statuette, the latter being used chiefly in the case 
of infants. The monument of a celebrated actress 
was pointed out, whose life-size bust in bronze rested 
on the top, together with a bronze mask and harp — 
heathenism again, and a relic of the days when the 
arms and horse of the dead warrior were buried with 
him, and domestic implements were interred with his 
wife or daughter. 

The weirdest thing in the cemetery was a grave that 
is simply a glass house, containing a vault or cellar 
with a trap-door and steps leading down into it. The 
Sister told us its story. After twenty years of married 
life, during which their prayers for offspring had been 
unanswered, a couple were finally presented with a 
daughter in 1873. Three years later the new-comer 
died. The unhappy parents had the body embalmed 
and placed in a coffin with a glass opening above the 
face. The tomb in question was built and the coffin 
deposited in the crypt. Every day for fourteen years 
past the mother had visited the house, descended 
through the trap-door, and spent some time looking 
into the face of the little one through the glass. No 
change had taken place in its appearance. This last 
item was told us with' a ring of honest pride in her 
voice, as indicating the peculiar fitness of the convent 
cemetery as a place of burial. 



NUNS AND CONINE NTS. 179 

Afterward we went to the convent, following our 
guide and chaperon along a dim corridor, that be- 
trayed a number of little doors in the walls. Before 
one of these doors we halted, while it was unlocked. 

" Domois pazhalt gospodin," said the guide, after 
my friend had entered, and accepting the invitation 
we found ourselves in a nun's cell. It was a cellar- 
like room, about eight paces by four, divided into two 
compartments by a screen. Small grated windows 
were on a level with the ground without, and the sills 
contained pots of flowers. The floor was innocent of 
carpet, but was polished as if with wax. 

The sitting-room contained a plain chest of drawers, 
chairs, table, and a little clock. A small brass samovar, 
which we were told was thirty years old, stood on the 
table, and on the wall hung small photographs of the 
Mother Abbotess, a couple of priests, and relatives of 
the outer world, besides the inevitable ikons and holy 
prints. A hospitable offer to steam up the samovar 
was declined on the score of time and trouble. The 
smaller compartment contained a narrow bed, with 
snowy sheets and a thick, comfortable mattress, stuffed 
with hemp, a chair, and a few other necessaries. The 
whole was a snug enough retreat. 

We next visited the department where the convent 
kwass is brewed. This was in charge of a lively old 
nun who, in the outer world had been a countess, and 
showed good breeding in every movement. She wore 
a working suit of rusty black and devoted her time to 
brewing kwass for the rest of the nuns. The room 
was full of big iron pots, tubs and sacks of rye flour, 
and was partly occupied by a big oven for baking and 



1 8o THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

drying the bread used in the process of kwass-making. 
Kwass and sugar for sweetening it were brought for 
us, and excellent black bread. The erstwhile Countess 
was so pleased at the praise bestowed on her rye bread 
that she insisted on wrapping several slices of it up in 
a paper for us to take home. 

Everything consumed by the nuns is, as far as pos- 
sible, the work of their own hands. They aim to pro- 
vide for all their own wants as well as to make things 
for sale. We visited the shoemaking room, where 
several Sisters were busy as bees with lasts, hammers, 
awls, wax, and thread ; and they brought out for our 
inspection several pairs of gaiters which had just been 
finished. Shoemaking is as much beyond a woman as 
sharpening a pencil is, and I must confess that my 
admiration of these elastic sides was the grossest 
flattery. 

We were soon in woman's true sphere, however, and 
there was no flattery in praising the gorgeous vest- 
ments of silk and gold which the nuns were making to 
sell to priests. Nor was it flattery, in the ikon room, 
which led us to praise the work of twenty or thirty 
demure-looking Sisters who were engaged in stamping 
out the most intricate patterns and mosaics on metal 
surfaces. Here they could work from patterns and 
tracings and were equal or superior to men. 

There was also a department or studio where about 
fifty nuns were painting holy pictures, with ancient 
ikons for their models ; and another room where other 
nuns ground and prepared the paint. 

From these very interesting scenes of life and activ- 
ity we once more sought the acquaintance of the dead, 



/. /' 







NUNS AND CONVENTS. i8l 

in the burial vaults beneath the convent. Only the 
very wealthy are buried here. Here was a burial-place, 
indeed. The cool, silent vaults were railed off with 
iron into squares, in which people were buried. There 
were marble angels, and paintings of the Saviour by 
eminent artists. Stained-glass windows flooded the 
scene with soft light. Here, too, were chairs, tables, 
etc., for the use of relatives. On one of the chairs 
in a family inclosure, sat a big tabby cat, fat and sleepy. 
" Da-dah," said the Sister, laughing, ' she is keepmg 
watch over the dead." 



CHAPTER XII. 

STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 

ON Saturday noon, July 26, just four weeks out from 
Moscow, we drew rein a moment to inquire of 
some moujiks the distance to Ekaterinoslav, which we 
could see ahead of us, spread over the slope leading up 
from the southern bank of the Dneiper to the steppe 
beyond. 

A few versts through the sandy, fly-plagued bottom 
lands of the Dneiper, and we were crossing the river 
over one of the finest iron bridges in Russia. There 
was a railway* track, and a road for ordinary traffic, 
above. The broad, though shallow river, far below, 
presented a scene that was made up of slowly floating 
rafts and small river steamers, carrying passengers, or 
towing curious round-roofed barges. Small boats, of 
the pointed half-moon pattern affected by the Cossacks 
of the Dneiper, were also moving languidly hither and 
thither. A small toll was collected from teams and 
horsemen crossing the bridge. Foot-passengers paid no 
toll. 

Ekaterinoslav, which from a distance made a favor- 
able impression on our minds, seemed to mock at our 
delusion as we sought a closer acquaintance. Russian 
cities, like the Russian character and nearly all Russian 
institutions, are seen to the best advantage when not 
too closely inspected. A city where all the roofs of 

1S2 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 183 

the houses are painted green and red, among which 
are a half dozen enormous churches with golden domes, 
or domes painted blue and spangled with golden stars, 
in imitation of the sky, presents a pretty enough pic- 
ture spread over a gentle slope, with a broad river for 
a foreground. 

Vast quantities of paint are used in Russia. Every- 
thing is daubed with paint — houses, roofs, railway sta- 
tions, prisons — nearly everything in the cities. The 
colors most in vogue are red, blue, green, and yellow. 

The colors of the roofs and houses in the cities, and 
the equally gay hues of the clothes worn by the peas- 
ants in the country, are the salvation of Russia from an 
artistic point of view. Without the red shirts of the 
moujiks the Russian villages would present not a sin- 
gle feature pleasing to the eye of the passing traveler; 
and without the brightening paint the provincial cities 
would be equally depressing. 

Ekaterinoslav consists of one long, broad street, or 
boulevard, and several short streets, crossing it at right 
angles. It is a provincial capital, and contains about 
40,000 inhabitants, with a large proportion of Hebrews 
and sectarians of many creeds. It was founded by 
Catharine II, on her memorable and fantastic journey of 
triumph through her dominions, from St. Petersburg to 
the Crimea, under the management of her gorgeous 
favorite, Potemkin. 

That shrewd and gallant courtier of the great Catha- 
rine, having discovered in advance that much of the 
territory through which his Imperial mistress would pass 
was uninhabited steppe, conceived and carried out the 
truly Oriental project of building sham villages all 



1 84 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

along the route. Log villages, brightly painted, sprang 
up like mushrooms at his bidding, and thousands of 
peasants were compelled, noleits v'olens, to take up their 
residence in them and to turn out in their Sunday- 
clothes when the Imperial party drove through. From 
Kiev the Empress sailed in barges down the Dneiper, 
and taking a fancy to the spot on which Ekaterinoslav 
now stands, ordered a city to be built. Her statue is 
perched on the highest spot of ground at the east end 
of the boulevard. 

This boulevard consists of three parallel roads. The 
center track is divided from the others by an avenue 
of trees and sidewalks, and is paved after the usual 
manner of provincial Russia, in other words, so 
abominably rough that the drosky drivers keep off it 
altogether, except in wet weather, when the side roads 
are sloughs of sticky mud. These side roads were 
several inches deep in dust as we rode down the street 
in search of a hotel, and droskies and squeaking telegas 
plowing through it filled the air to suffocation. 

Dusty policemen eyed us suspiciously, and news was 
immediately conveyed to the Chief of Police that a 
couple of strange horsemen had arrived in the city. 
Ekaterinoslav is full of latent sedition, both civil and 
religious, and the authorities are offensively suspicious 
of anything that strikes them as being a trifle out of 
the ordinary. That we were dangerous characters to 
be at large seemed the opinion of every policeman who 
cast his eye on us as we rode down the street, and at the 
hotel our passports were at once declared '' irregular." 

In short, we were to be detained on some pretext or 
other until the police authorities had tirne to revolve 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 185 

in their exceedingly suspicious minds all known cir- 
cumstances connected with us. Of course, we were not 
told this in a straightforward manner, blunt honesty 
in such matters being entirely foreign to the police 
authorities of Russia, except those at the top of the 
tree in St. Petersburg, who have nothing to fear in case 
of making a mistake. The provincial tchinovnik, when 
called upon to take action upon anything outside his 
ordinary routine, is prone to lose his senses and com- 
mit some remarkable piece of folly. His logic is sur- 
prisingly eccentric to begin with, and he is always pain- 
fully aware of being between the Scylla of underzeal, 
which may cost him his ofificial head, and the Charyb- 
dis of "putting his foot in it " through meddling with 
what he does not understand. 

The ofificials of Ekaterinoslav could not believe that 
two horsemen might ride through the country and be 
neither spies of some foreign government, secret mis- 
sionaries bent on corrupting the allegiance of the Ortho- 
dox moujiks, political propagandists disseminating the 
seeds of sedition, nor Nihilists inciting them to rebell- 
ion against the Czar. All these possibilities and a 
hundred variations of these, occurred to the inscrutable 
minds of the tchinovniks of Ekaterinoslav in connec- 
tion with our appearance. 

They could not understand my American passport. 
"It should have been written in Russian." Sascha's 
document was no passport at all — a fact that we had had 
very good reason to know without further enlighten- 
ment here. '' Why hadn't I a special passport grant- 
ing the right to travel through Russia in this most ex- 
traordinary manner?" 



I S6 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

This was indeed the rub — we were a little different 
from the mortals about them, a thing that never fails 
to arouse the suspicions of the Russian of^cials to ab- 
normal activity. A foreigner on horseback with a 
strange Russian for an interpreter, the one with no 
document except an American passport which they 
were unable to make anything of, the other with an 
'' irregular " paper ! No wonder that officials, whose 
first qualification for the faithful discharge of their du- 
ties is to be suspicious of everything and everybody, 
were more than suspicious of us. 

In Russia everybody is considered a criminal of some 
kidney or other, unless he has papers in his pocket 
proving him to be otherwise. Since, to the tchinovnik 
mind, we were without such papers, we must therefore 
be "something," though they were sorely puzzled for a 
definite reply to their suspicions. 

Arrest us? Oh, dear, no! not yet. No telling who 
or what this American might turn out to be. 

Detain us, then, on suspicion ? No, not even that 
on direct police responsibility; this American might 
have friends in high places in St. Petersburg; who 
could tell ? Still, for all this, we must be detained on 
some pretext or other, and, however fantastic in his 
logic, the Russian tchinovnik is never at a loss for a 
pretext. 

When we returned to the hotel, after a visit to the 
post-office and to the railway station, where it had 
taken us a couple of hours to unravel sufficient red 
tape to dispatch a valise to Sevastopol, the hostler in- 
formed us that a gentleman in a black coat and derby 
hat had been in the stable critically examining our 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 187 

horses. By and by we received notice from the Chief 
of Police that the Society for Prevention of Cruelty tx) 
Animals had pronounced Sascha's horse unfit to travel, 
owing to a saddle-sore on its back, and, ^therefore, 
though very reluctant to detain us, he would have to 
beg us to postpone our departure until further notice. 

This was really a clever move, thoroughly Russian, 
not to say Oriental ; worthy of MahmoudYusuf Khan, 
the Afghan chief, who once obstructed the author's 
road through Afghanistan, not because he wished to 
do so, but " for your own good " ; worthy indeed of 
the wiliest of diplomats. 

It seemed odd, though, that there should be in 
Ekaterinoslav, the head-center of Russian Jew-baiting 
and sectarian persecution, a Society for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals. There was one, however — a 
society of emotional old ladies, so far as we could learn. 
They were certainly handy for the Chief of Police to 
turn to in a case like ours, and the tchinovnik who 
thought of them, and reasoned that horses that had 
been ridden through the midsummer heat from Mos- 
cow might perhaps not be in first-class form, deserved 
promotion then and there. 

We proceeded to the police station on Sunday 
morning, and spent an hour or so waiting for the ar- 
rival of the chief. To the under police officers an 
American was a rara avis, and his demeanor a positive 
enigma. The spectacle of a human being in civilian's 
clothes, and somewhat travel-worn clothes to boot, 
presuming to conduct himself in a self-reliant, inde- 
pendent manner in a room full of tchinovniks, filled 
them with amazement. 



1 88 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

In provincial Russia the ordinary civilian is expected 
to cringe and cower like a whipped cur before every 
petty officer of police, and the constitutional attitude 
of the latter is one of overbearing insolence. Ekaterinos- 
lav is one of the worst police-ridden holes in Russia, 
owing to the mixed character of the population, and 
the fact that the city aspires to the distinction of being 
the chief intellectual center of South Russia. " Intel- 
lectual centers " being, in the opinion of the Czar's 
government, synonymous with treason, political in- 
trigue, and the like, the good people of Ekaterinoslav 
have to put up with a more than ordinarily trouble- 
some dose of police officers as an offset to their human 
vanity in the indulgence of intellectual aspirations. 

The writer flatters himself that he very likely gave 
the police officers of Ekaterinoslav the first faint con- 
ception which had ever entered their queer minds that 
a person in private clothes might, after all, possess a 
few abstract rights, even in the presence of minions of 
autocracy in uniform. 

Since none of them offered me a seat, I simply took 
the nearest empty one. 

Such a remarkable occurrence as this had probably 
never happened before in all the eventful history of 
the police station of Ekaterinoslav. A civilian so 
independent in the presence of police officers as to 
take a seat! This action produced a mild sensation 
among the officers, and was rewarded with side looks 
of consternation from half a dozen civilians who stood 
huddled up near the door, hats in hand, the very pic- 
ture of sheepish submission. 

This was decidedly amusing, and, leaning back corn- 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 189 

fortably in the chair, I now cocked my feet up on a 
wooden bench about two feet high. This, though a 
popular American attitude, was, of course, under the 
circumstances, wrong. But I was now merely acting 
a part for the purpose of giving these gentlemen an 
exaggerated idea of the relative positions of policemen 
and civilians in America, which I wanted them to 
understand to be opposite to their relations in Ekateri- 
noslav. 

The last attitude caused them to redden up to the 
very roots of their hair, and there really seemed a 
danger that one or two of them might even go off into 
apoplectic fits. To them I was as much of a phenom- 
enon as a sheep who should venture among Avolves 
without exhibiting fear. Had I suddenly thrown off 
my civilian garb, and in familiar Russian revealed 
myself to them as Gen. Rusezki, of the Petersburg 
Division of the Third Section Secret Police, who had 
dropped in on them in the guise of an American 
traveler, they would have comprehended me at once, 
independent attitude and all. But since nothing of 
the sort took place, one of the officers summoned 
Sascha into an adjoining room and proceeded to ques- 
tion him in regard to my extremely queer behavior. 

Was this gentleman aware that he was in the pres- 
ence of police officers ? 

" Yes," said Sascha, " he knows you are police offi- 
cers, but he is an American, and in America it is the 
police who humble themselves before the people, and 
not the people before the police." 

This was Sascha's exaggerated interpretation of 
what had been told him some days before as to the 



1 90 THRO UGH R USSIA ON A M USTANG. 

relations between police and people in England and 
America. The officer probably did not believe him, 
since a Russian seldom believes what is told him, unless 
it agrees in some measure with his own knowledge and 
conceptions ; and nothing \\\ all the wide range of 
human affairs could seem so wildly improbable to this 
man as the explanation that had been vouchsafed by 
my companion. 

Still there must be something in it, for on no other 
grounds could my extraordinary bearing be explained. 
And so, after considerable consultation together, they 
decided to compromise matters by simply asking me 
to assume an upright position in the chair instead of 
the free-and-easy American loll. 

Sascha explained afterward their talk among them- 
selves, which is worth mentioning as an evidence of 
the Russian idea of Americans. They were more 
puzzled than affronted at my independent bearing. 
They had always had a friendly feeling toward Ameri- 
cans, though they knew very little about them, they 
agreed among themselves and with Sascha. But my 
conduct was decidedly different from anything they 
had ever thought of in connection with us. 

" Tell them that the police officers are the servants 
and not the masters of the people in America," I said 
to Sascha, not, however, without mental reservations 
that would, if expressed, have made my case rather 
foggy and difficult to be understood. 

*' But this is Russia," replied one of the officers. 
'* Here the Czar is master and the police represent his 
power among the people. Here the people not only 
have to obey the police, but they also have to come to 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 19I 

the police and beg and pray to be allowed to do what 
they wish." And this was said in a tone of exultation : 
" It is we who have the whip hand in Russia, and we 
mean to keep it, too ! " 

The police stations are the busiest places in Russia. 
Through the instrumentality of the police the govern- 
ment of the Czar attempts to regulate the goings in 
and the comings out, and well-nigh every move, 
motive, and concern of the whole vast population of 
this broad empire, which extends from the German 
frontier to the Pacific, and contains 120,000,000 souls. 
This great organization of belted, booted, and sabered 
policemen are the hands, eyes, and ears of the paternal 
government of the White Czar. This paternal govern- 
ment assumes that the people are children, who are 
not to be permitted to take the initiative in anything 
beyond the mere animal acts of eating, drinking, sleep- 
ing, and working in the fields. 

By means of the elaborate passport system the police 
are enabled to keep their hands on all this numerous 
family, and to require them to apply at the police 
stations whenever they wish to do anything or go any- 
where, much as children apply to their parents. Hence 
it comes that in the Russian police stations there is a 
stream of people constantly coming and going. The 
people are mulcted in fees on every imaginable pre- 
text, and the amount gf money that flows into the 
treasury through the sluices of the police stations, in 
the form of petty exactions, must be enormous. Half 
as much more, probably, finds its way into the pockets 
of the police officers in the form of bribes. 

Bribery is carried on in the Russian police ofifices in 



1 9 2 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

a comically open manner. We were in the Ekaterinos- 
lav office probably an hour, ajid during that time ob- 
served three separate cases that took place under our 
very noses with hardly an effort at secrecy. The man 
who seemed to come in for the lion's share of the 
bribes was a little bald-headed fellow who wore a re- 
markably high collar. 

He was the secretary, who had to fill out passports, 
prepare petitions, and the like. When seated at his 
desk his back was turned to my point of observation, 
and when he was bent over, writing, his enormous 
collar concealed all but the baldest and shiniest part of 
his head. And when he looked up and exposed the 
remnants of hair that still clung to the sides, it was as 
though a young chicken had just succeeded in pecking 
a hole in its shell, sufficiently large to peep out and 
take a curious inventory of its surroundings. 

The head did, in fact, take very frequent inventories, 
not exactly of its surroundings, but of the group of 
civilians who stood huddled up in a humbly submissive 
attitude, hats in hand, near the door. 

Russian officials who occupy situations where bribes 
are offered in the presence of other people always wear 
short office jackets with pockets ready to hand at the 
sides. The little man with the high collar wore one 
of these jackets, as a matter of course, and the dex- 
terity with which he could transfer paper money from 
the hand of a petitioner to the pockets in it was beauti- 
ful to see. There was nothing particularly rapid about 
the movement, nothing of legerdemain, in which the 
quickness of the hand is relied on to deceive the eye, 
but there was an elegant gracefulness in the act that 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 193 

stamped it at once as an accomplishment acquired by 
long and daily practice. 

The givers of bribes seemed to be mostly ignorant 
moujiks from the country. Among the applicants of 
the morning was a moujik who had neglected to renew 
his passport at the proper time. Passports have to be 
renewed at regular intervals, and a person who absents 
himself for any length of time beyond brings down 
on himself the suspicions of the authorities in addition 
to penalties and fines. The '' children " of the Czar, 
like any other children, are forever doing some foolish 
thing or other that would get them into trouble should 
it come to the paternal knowledge. Anyhow, it is ex- 
tremely uncomfortable to come under the ban of sus- 
picion, and above all things else the moujik dreads 
anything that will bring him conspicuously to the 
notice of the police. 

The moujik in question stood, apparently, perilously 
near the precipice of police suspicion, as the bald head 
of the little secretary protruded once again above the 
white collar and scrutinized the group against the door, 
and slightly nodded. The moujik stepped forward, and, 
touching his top-knot with the hand that held his cap, 
handed the secretary a tattered document. It was his 
passport, that should have been renewed some time 
before. 

The secretary whirled round in his chair, and, look- 
ing the delinquent full in the face, shot from the 
depths of his big, lack-luster eyes a look that spoke 
plainer than printed words. The moujik very likely 
could not have read print, but he readily understood 
the secretary's look, and, in fact, had been expecting it. 



1 9 4 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. 

Crumbled up in his horny fist were several greasy- 
ruble notes, part of which were to pay for the new pass- 
port and the others were to be his salvation from the 
dreaded suspicion of the police. 

The notes were handed over, covertly slipped from 
one half-closed hand to another, and, presto ! part of 
them fell into the handy pocket just below the little 
secretary's extended hand, and the rest were smoothed 
out leisurely on his desk and laid away in the drawer 
where they belonged. The little secretary was, in 
effect, a flesh-and-blood automaton : his pocket was the 
slot in which the moujik put the rubles, and the prize 
drawn was a passport, dated a month or two back — in 
substance, a certificate of immunity from further annoy- 
ance and suspicion for several months to come. 

It is their salvation from a peck of trouble that the 
common people of Russia know that an automaton of 
this character is to be found in every police station, 
not necessarily with a bald head and high collar, but 
always with a slot for ruble notes, by means of which a 
surprising variety of prizes may be drawn. When not 
too outrageously exacting, these tchinovniks, with ready 
hands and pockets, are consequently to be regarded as 
friends rather than enemies of the people. 

In Russia anything a man does, or anything he says, 
or even anything he does not do or say, may get him 
into trouble. Everything depends on how he manages 
to stand in the estimation of the police. The offenses 
of omission are as numerous as those of commission. 
There is a story popular among the peasants that a 
moujik was once found dead in the forest. The priest 
refused to grant him burial in the grave-yard for fear he 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 195 

had committed suicide, and the police refused to let 
him be buried outside for fear he had not committed 
suicide. To settle the question an autopsy was held 
on the corpse, and when it was cut open a police certi- 
ficate was found inscribed on the heart stating his age, 
his name, his sex, the color of his hair, beard, and eyes, 
his native village, and the number of his house, etc. 

In Russia almost every conceivable thing a man 
might do is regulated by the written law. The Rus- 
sian idea of governing the people is in direct opposi- 
tion to the conceptions of the West. With us every- 
thing that the law does not expressly forbid is per- 
mitted ; in Russia everything is forbidden that the law 
does not expressly grant, which means next to noth- 
ing at all. And when the whole matter is removed 
from the realm of theory to every-day practice, 
Russia, though there is a code of between twenty and 
thirty huge folio volumes of about 2000 pages apiece, 
is a country as lawless as an African chieftain's do- 
main. A man with neither money to bribe, nor influ- 
ence in high places to protect, is at the mercy of any 
petty police officer or secret government spy, who, out 
of sheer personal spite, may get him shipped off to the 
mines of Siberia and ruined for life, though he be the 
most innocent and harmless person in all Russia. 

The second man, who greased the palm and found 
his way to the good offices of the little bald-headed 
secretary by means of rubles, seemed to be a burlak 
or city workman. The exact nature of the transaction 
we couldn't make out. This time when the secretary 
examined the document that was handed to him he 
discovered the rubles neatly placed between the folds. 



196 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

He didn't seem in the least surprised or disconcerted; 
didn't even give expression to an apologetic little 
cough, nor bestow a single glance of acknowledgment 
on the burlak, but just simply lowered the document 
and the rubles a trifle below the level of his desk, and 
when the document was spread out a moment later on 
the desk the rubles were gone. Only this, and nothing 
more. 

My heart began to warm toward this worthy gentle- 
man,' as to a doctor engaged in alleviating the suffer- 
ings of the halt, the sick, and the blind, for which he 
refuses to charge more than they are able and willing 
to give. Bribery, as an abstract thing, may be detesta- 
ble, but so long as the present form of government 
obtains in Russia, by all means multiply the number 
of baldheaded little tchinovniks with high collars and 
large pockets. 

The petitioners who came to the police station while 
we were in the office were a curious crowd. There 
was an isvoshchic who came to complain that a man 
had ridden in his drosky without having the money 
to pay his fare. There was a poor old woman who 
was waiting when we arrived and was still waiting, 
without anybody paying attention to her, when we 
left ; and there was a plump, good-looking young crea- 
ture, who sailed in, was received with polite attention, 
shown into a private office, and bowed out again, all 
inside of ten minutes. 

But the most interesting character of any was a 
loutish young moujik, of about twenty-five summers, in 
a sheepskin overcoat warm enough for the north pole, 
though he w^as in South Russia and it was July. This 



STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 197 

typical young Orthodox came blubbering into the 
police office with wet eyes, which he had rubbed with 
a pair of huge, greasy fists until they were redder than 
his hair, and between pitiful "boo-hoos!" and heart- 
broken snuf^es, told the officers that he had been play- 
ing cards and lost eight rubles. 

His chum, another moujik in a sheepskin, came with 
him to confirm his story. There was no complaint of 
being cheated. He had simply come to the police as 
a child, who had let an apple fail out of the window, 
would go weeping to tell its mother. 

" Nitchevo ! " said the officers, stroking his shaggy 
red head in mock affection and patting him gently on 
the sheepskin overcoat. ** Nitchevo!" and they sent 
him off to tell his tale of woe to some official at the 
other end of the city. This officer would likewise 
reply tenderly, '' Nitchevo ! " and send him to some one 
else; and this one again to yet another distant quarter 
of Ekaterinoslav, to tell some one else. By the end 
of the day the unfortunate moujik and his chum would 
become weary of being sent hither and thither to no 
purpose, and so give it up. What they expected to 
gain by informing the police had probably never 
occurred to them. 

At length the Chief of Police arrived. Behind him 
came a couple of policemen, bringing a wretched look- 
ing Jew, whom they said had set, or had tried to set, 
fire to a building. The Chief ordered him to be shut 
up three daj's in a dark cell without food or w^ater. 
Sascha interpreted the sentence to me, and added that 
it served him right. The three days' sentence was, I 
suppose, preliminary to his trial. 



1 9 8 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. 

The Chief was an intelligent, energetic man. He 
took us into his private office and^ understanding that 
I knew nothing of Russian, proceeded to question 
Sascha. 

'' Why was I traveling through Russia in this strange 
manner? How came it that a Russian and an Ameri- 
can were journeying together on horseback ? What 
was our motive? Who had given us permission ? Did 
I take notes and send off letters ? Who and what 
was I ? etc." 

But the questions and answers were such a curious 
study of the multiformity of the suspicions that can 
be brought to bear on any given subject by a Russian 
police officer that they deserve a separate chapter. 
They read like one of those catechetical productions 
that once went the round of the American newspapers 
under the title of '' Mullkittle's Kid." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION. 

WHEN we returned to our hotel, after the visit to 
the Ekaterinoslav police station, Sascha declared 
himself " out of mind with trouble." From the way 
the Chief had questioned him no end of trouble was 
to be expected, and all the Police Master had said in 
regard to letting us proceed on our way was to advise 
us to see the Governor of the province. Sascha's 
spirits, like those in a barometer in stormy weather, 
were much given to rising and falling, carrying him 
into Himalayan heights of bliss, and plunging him into 
abysmal depths of despair, many times during a day- 
Though he i^ung himself on the lounge in our room 
with the abandon of a person utterly undone, when we 
returned from the police station, dinner, with a bottle 
of his favorite cordial, brought him around at once to a 
rosier view of the situation. The Chief, he thought, 
had asked him at least two hundred questions, many 
of which were ridiculous. The catechetical examina- 
tion, as near as he could recall it, was as follows: 
" Who is this man, your companion ? " 
** He is an American, Mr. Stevens." 
" How do you know he's an American ? " 
" He has an American passport and he speaks Eng- 
lish. I believe he's an American." 

*' The passport doesn't prove anything. He might 

199 



200 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

have obtained that from some one else. How do you 
know who he is? How are we to know ? " 

'* I believe there is no doubt about his being an 
American. He sends his letters to America." 

"' Ha, he sends letters, then ? " 
• " Yes, to America." 

" What does he say in his letters, and where does he 
send them to ?" 

" I don't know what he says. He sends them to 
New York." 

''How often does he send away letters; are they 
big letters? " 

*'Yes, big letters, and he sends them whenever we 
reach a city." 

''But what does he find to write about? what's his 
business? is he a correspondent?" 

" He sends letters to America and he will write a 
book about Russia. This is what he is riding through 
the country on horseback for." 

"Butyou. What are you with him for? How's this?" 

" I am traveling with him to interpret for him and 
because I wish to see the country." 

" But I can't understand it. A Russian and an 
American traveling together in this extraordinary 
manner. Who gave you leave to do this thing? " 

" My brother and my mother both gave their con- 
sent. My certificate of communion and college certifi- 
cate were both lost with my passport. You have seen 
my passport, obtained at Orel." 

" That is not a passport ! You have nothing to prove 
who you are ! You look more like an Italian than a 
Russian ! " (Sascha was dark.) 



A SEARCHIXG CROSS-EXAMINATION. 201 

" I am a Russian Orthodox. I am well known in 
Moscow, where my brother is in business." 

*' What's your brother's name? How old is he? 
What business is he in ? How do we know all this?" 

**His name is Nicolai Critsch. All I tell you is 
true. 

" Did you ask the Governor of Moscow to let you 
make this journey? " 

*' No, we didn't think it would be necessary." 

"Did people in Moscow know you were going to 
start?" 

" It was announced in the newspapers there." 

" What newspapers ? " 

'■'■ The Moskovski Listok, the Novosti, and others." 

" Where did you get the money to make this jour- 
ney r 

" Mr. Stevens pays the expenses for both of us." 

" Where does he get it ? " 

*' I don't know. From America, I suppose." 

'' Has he got much ? " 

" I don't know." 

" But there must be some motive for such a journey. 
People don't spend money and undergo the fatigues of 
such undertakings for nothing." 

" I have told you — he wished to write a book about 
Russia." 

•' Ah ! Has he written books before ? " 

'* Yes ; two, I believe." 

" About Russia? " 

"No; about Africa, and about a bic}'cle journey 
around the Avorld." 

"Is he a celebrated man ? Is he the American who 



2 o 2 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG, 

was once a cowboy and has now become famous ? " (A 
confused idea of Stanley, and Carver's " Wild Amer- 
ica " — that had been performing in Moscow — cropped 
out here.) 

'' I don't know." 

" Is he writing good things or bad about Russia? " 

" I don't know. I don't think he is writing bad 
things, however." 

" How do you know he isn't ? " 

*' I don't know." 

*^ Where's his writing? Where does he keep it ?" 

'' He has sent it away, I have said." 

'' Sent all of it away? " 

'* He makes notes in a book every day — short 
notes." 

''What about?" 

" About the things we see along the road." 

''What do you mean? What things has he seen?" 

" He writes about the moujiks, the traktirs, the 
uriadniks, and the country." 

" What does he say about the moujiks ? " 

" He tells about the way they live, what they eat, 
and how they cultivate the land." 

" Does he have anything to say to them ? " 

" No ; he doesn't speak Russian." 

" Are you sure that he doesn't speak Russian ?" 

" I have never heard him speak Russian." 

" Perhaps he only pretends that he doesn't. How 
do you know ? " 

" I don't believe he speaks any Russian. He asks 
me about everything." 

" What things does he ask you ? " 



A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION. 203 

" About the people ; all sorts of questions." 
'* Does he ever go about among the moujiks without 
you r 

'* We are together all the time." 
*' He is always with you ; never alone?" 
"We have traveled together from Moscow." 
*' Does he sleep where you do? " 
" Yes ; we always stop at the same place at night." 
" How do you know he doesn't get up when you're 
asleep and go about among the people?" 
" I don't believe he does." 
" But do you know this positively ? " 
" I should know if he did ; I know he does not." 
" How would you know if you were asleep ?" 
"I don't believe he does." 

" What things has he got with him in his saddle- 
bags ? " 

" A few clothes and two or three books." 
*' What are the books about ? Are they in Rus- 
sian : 

" No, they are in English. One is an American 
magazine." 

" Has he got any printed matter in Russian ? " 
"No." 

" How do you know ? " 
" I know that he has not." 

" No little books, pamphlets, or printed sheets ? " 
" No; he has nothing of the kind in Russian." 
"Are you sure he doesn't give the moujiks any 
papers ? " 

" I have never seen him give them any papers." 
" But in the night, when you're asleep ? " 



204 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

" I believe he doesn't give them anything." 

"You're a young man and have much to learn 
from experience. What things does he ask you 
about ? " 

" I have said, — about the people and the country." 

"You must not show him any bad things. Do you 
know this ? " 

" He sees everything with his own eyes. I only ex- 
plain them if he doesn't understand. I cannot help 
what he sees as we ride along." 

''■ What else has he got ? " 

" He has a Kamaret." 

"What's a Kamaret?" 

" A new kind of camera." 

" Who gave him permission to carry a camera?'* 

" I don't know. He has no permission." 

" What did they say about this at Tula, Kharkoff, 
and Kurskh ? " 

" Nobody asked him about a camera at these places." 

" How does he carry it ? " 

" On his horse." 

" Has he taken any pictures with it ?" 

"Yes." 

" Where are they ? We must see them." 

" You cannot see them. They are to be taken to 
America to be developed." 

" What pictures has he taken ? " 

" Moujiks, uriadniks, houses, all sorts of things." 

"What is his idea in taking pictures? What will 
he do with them ?" 

" He wishes to show them to people in America, I 
suppose." 



A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION. 205 

" Doesn't he know he has no right to take pictures 
without permission ? " 

'' He knows he must not pholograph prisons and 
fortresses." 

" How do you know he hasn't photographed these 
as well ? " 

"■ I don't believe he has. He knows that it is against 
the law. ' 

" When did you first make his acquaintance ? *' 

"A month ago, in Moscow." 

" How did you come to know him ? " 

** I learned that he was going to ride on horseback 
to the Crimea, and volunteered to go with him and in- 
terpret for him." 

*' You didn't know him before he came to ]\Ioscow ? " 

''No." 

'' How did you know what kind of a man he was ? " 

" I and my brother went and saw him. He is an 
American, and a good man." 

" Did he want you to go with him first, or only after 
you asked him ? " 

" We talked it over. He then said he would be glad 
to have my company." 

*' Well, you must see the Governor to-morro\v. He 
wishes to see you. You must not leave town or take 
any photographs. Now, in God's name, go." 

In addition to this catechetical examination, other 
ingenious arguments were forthcoming to convince us 
that we had no business to travel through Russia on 
horseback without the special permission of the Gov- 
ernors of the various provinces. And these arguments 
are worth reproducing, because they illustrate better 



2 o 6 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

than whole volumes of pedantic scribbling the Russian 
idea of government. 

*' Now," said the police officer, when we called again 
to see about our passports, very politely and in the 
manner of a man who had no doubt but that he had at 
length discovered a thoroughly Invincible argument, 
"a Governor is master in his province just as a man is 
master in his own home. Is it right that you should 
go into a man's house without obtaining his permission, 
and go to taking photographs of his pictures, his statues, 
his ikons, his carpets, and furniture, and take notes and 
write letters and books about what you have seen ? 
Tell the American gospodin this." 

And as Sascha proceeded to explain, the officer made 
a French-like gesture, pantomiming : " There you are; 
now you see who is in the wrong! " 

" Tell him," I said to Sascha, in reply, '' that it is 
true we are here without the Governor's permission, 
but we come into the province and go out again with- 
out stealing anything or killing anybody, and leave 
everything exactly as we found it. What harm is there 
in photographing moujiks and moujiks' houses?" 

My argument, however, was American, and his un- 
compromisingly Russian. My position was as illogical 
to him as his was impossible for me. Yet this man, 
and several millions like him, are living under the re- 
markable delusion that they and the Americans are 
very much alike ! If there is any real attraction be- 
tween Americans and Russians it seemed to me that 
it must be of that character which sometimes draws 
toward each other two persons of strangely opposite 
natures. 



A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION. 2o;r 

The officer, of course, shook his head in disapproval. 

" You have no riglit to enter a man's house," he pur- 
sued, " without his permission, even if you harm noth- 
ing m it. 

In the name of Uncle Sam, I thereupon invited him 
to America, where, if he pleased, he might photograph 
the entire country and v/rite anything he chose without 
troubling himself to inquire whether anybody liked it 
or not. And I pointed out that, from his standard, a 
man who proposed to do anything in Russia would have 
to get leave from the Czar, then from the Governors, 
then from the starostas of the villages, and from the 
owners of the houses ; and in order to photograph a 
moujik's cottage, one would have to reckon with the 
Czar, Governor, starosta, and moujik. How could a 
moujik's wretched hovel belong to four different 
people ? 

This latter proposition, however, Sascha declined to 
interpret, on the grounds that we might get three or 
four days in jail for " makiilg an insolent reply." 

At nine o'clock on Monday morning we called on 
the Governor. At the door of his mansion we came in 
contact with an interesting individual popularly known 
as the " Little Governor." Russians with a sense of 
humor sometimes refer to the doorkeeper of a Gov- 
ernor's mansion as the " Big Little Governor," since 
this personage is in one way of even more importance 
than his master. 

The secret of the Little Governor's power and im- 
portance lies in the fact that anybody who wishes to 
see the Big Governor had best first "■ see " him. In fact, 
since the Little Governor is invariably an Orthodox, 



2o8 'JHKOUGH RUSSIA OX'A MUSTAXG. 

it is hardly necessary to add that this plan is not only 
the easiest but very often the only possible way. Though 
the salary is only about 200 rubles a year, the posi- 
tion of Little Governor is said to be one of the 
most coveted offices in Russia. Certainly, the average 
Russian, below a certain rank, would ask for no better 
paradise than to be autocrat of the hallway of a Pro- 
vincial Governor's mansion. 

This particular Little Governor looked as if he were 
the depository of all the secrets of Ekaterinoslav; and 
it was as good as going to the theater to see a new 
comed\', to sit in his little domain an hour and observe 
his fine play of airs and condescension toward appli- 
cants for admission to the Governor. 

His Excellency the Governor turned out to be a 
bland, amiable, and sensibly diplomatic gentleman. 
His words were honey and his smile as bewitching and 
irresistible as the blandishments of a lovely woman. 
He inquired after our health and assured us that we 
were to him as if we were liTs own sons. He had heard, 
he said, that an agent of the Society for the Preven- 
tion of Cruelty to Animals had examined our horses 
and had found one of them with a saddle sore, but 
hoped that this would not delay us very long. 

Sascha was so thoroughly overcome by the witchery 
of the great man's blandishments that he seemed to 
rise off the very floor with electric expansion. 

** I pray Your Excellency," said he, "to give us a 
letter saying that you have no suspicions of us; that 
you have seen us and believe us to be good men." 

" I have seen vou," said the Governor, " and have 
pleasure to admire you," (yubovatsa) and his Excel- 



A SEARCHING CJ^OSS-EXAM/XA TIOi\. 209 

lency beamed on Sascha even more sweetly, more irre- 
sistibly than ever. 

In the same smooth and fascinating tone of voice, 
accompanied by the same irresistible, confidence-in- 
spiring smile, he then kindly asked Sascha a few ques- 
tions, similar to those that had been put to us at the 
police station. None but a very skeptic, howex'er, 
would have found it in his heart to have suspected 
the Governor of asking those questions because he had 
any suspicions of us, or of taking an}thing but the 
most paternal and kindly interest in our case. 

He also hoped that Sascha had not shown me any- 
thing bad in the country, as the Chief of Police had 
hoped ; but so fatherly and benevolent a friend to us 
as the Governor would never be guilty of expressing 
himself in the form of a command. 

It was all very sweet and bewitching, this interview 
with His Excellency, and when we were graciously 
dismissed, one of us, at least, was in the seventh heaven 
of bliss and walked down and out of the Gubernatorial 
presence with a flutter of delicious excitement. 

We had been received in the Gubernatorial ball 
room, a large apartment, with mirrors, gilt chairs, and a 
pretty little balcon}^ for the orchestra. We had been 
shown to seats just beneath this balcony to wait until 
the Governor came out to receive us, and it was under 
the balcony, with backs turned to it, that we had stood 
all the time that His Excellency smiled on us and 
questioned us. 

My somewhat varied experience of the Oriental 
world led me to suspect that seats had been thought- 
fully set for us under this pretty little balcony previous 



2 1 6 THR UGH R US SI A OiV A M US TA NG. 

to our arrival, and that all the time the Governor was 
interviewing us that genial gentleman's official ste- 
nographer had been ensconced therein, kindly noting 
down all that was said. Sascha wouldn't believe, how- 
ever, that such a paragon of affability and tenderness 
as His Exccllenc}' could be guilty of so ungenerous a 
proceeding, and so the slight noise that I fancied I 
had heard in the pretty little balcony behind us was 
probably the Gubernatorial cat in quest of mice. 

Had not His Excellency, forsooth, during the inter- 
view intimated that "everything would be all right?" 
And from this had not our sanguine souls drawn the 
inference that our passports were to be returned to us 
immediately and that the Governor would, as Sascha 
had requested, give us additional documents, stating 
that he had seen us and believed us to be good men ? 

So, returning to the hotel to make preparations for 
our departure, I left Sascha at the Gubernatorial 
mansion to bring on the papers. 

One, two, three hours I waited, and then, wonder- 
ing what could be detaining him, returned and sought 
him out. Sascha was discovered seated in an office 
deep in despair. The reason being that, although he 
gathered from the Governor's intimations that we were 
to receive our papers and be permitted to go on our 
way, none of the Governor's secretaries and subor- 
dinates would assume the responsibility of taking any 
chance in the matter of securing them for him. 

After appealing in vain to the secretaries, he had 
even permitted himself to become indignant, that these 
underlings should callously ignore the wishes of so 
gracious a gentleman as their master, and had rushed 



A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMIiYATION. 2ii 

down-stairs and appealed to our very important friend 
the Little Governor. To his further astonishment, 
however, even the Little Governor seemed all at once 
to have grown callous and indifferent, and confined 
himself to merely stating that His Excellency was a 
very busy man, and that Gen. So-and-so, a very im- 
portant person, had once waited a whole week before 
he was granted an audience. 

Russian officials are past - masters in the noble 
Oriental art of humbugging and procrastinating, and 
becoming alarmed at the Little Governor's hint about 
Gen. So-and-so, who had waited a week, I then 
and there determined on a somewhat heroic expe- 
dient. 

The most effective weapon against Eastern humbug 
is Western bounce. Interpreting literally, according 
to my instructions, Sascha now informed the chief of 
the bureaucratic staff in the office that if the necessary 
papers to allow us to continue on our way were not 
forthcoming by three o'clock, I intended to "telegraph 
to the American government that an American citizen 
was illegally detained by the officials of Ekaterinoslav. 
That the American government would then telegraph 
to St. Petersburg, and then whatever happened, the 
responsibility would lie on their own heads." (!) 

The tchinovniks didn't exactly curl up and die at 
this threat of communicating with Uncle Sam, but 
they changed color and exhibited various other unmis- 
takable signs of having been touched on a very sensi- 
tive spot. Having delivered this home thrust, I went 
back to the hotel. 

By and by Sascha turned up, once again in high 



2 1 2 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

feather. " It's all right now," he said ; " they only want 
money to pay for stamps to put on the documents the 
Governor will give us." I gave him the money for the 
stamps. In an hour he turned up again, slightly crest- 
fallen. 

More money for more stamps. 

This time I returned with him, and the upshot of it 
all was that after paying twice over for the stamps — 
three rubles and twenty kopecks — we received a couple 
of papers without any stamps on them at all and an 
order that I would not be allowed to proceed unless I 
sent my Kamaret back to Moscow. I took a firm 
stand, however, on the question of the camera, and 
told the Governor I should take it with me and he 
could do as he pleased about stopping me and taking 
it away on his own responsibility. 

Responsibility is a capital word to conjure with in 
any trouble with Russian officers, for they dread the 
assumption of it worse than anything else on earth. 
As for telegraphing to America, the gentlemanly 
Governor begged that I would not do him the injus- 
tice to suppose that such a thing were necessary in 
connection with our visit to his province ; he was only 
too delighted to facilitate my movements, though he 
would prefer that I send away my camera. The Gov- 
ernor of the Crimea, however, he felt sure, would 
refuse to let us proceed, and there it might be neces- 
sary to telegraph. 

During our visits to the Gubernatorial offices we 
were once unwittingly left in a room by ourselves, on 
the table of which lay a number of documents. They 
were reports that had been brought in that morning by 



A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION: 213 

secret agents of the Third Section of His Imperial 
Majesty's poh'ce. 

We were left in that room only ten or fifteen min- 
utes, and during that brief period a flood of light was 
let in on my soul, in regard to the methods of the 
rulers of the Russian people, as brilliant as the light 
that smote with blindness Saul of Tarsus. There was, 
however, this difference, that whereas the light that 
fell upon Saul came from heaven, that which came to 
me seemed to glare up from the opposite direction ; 
and while he was temporarily blinded, the partial 
blindness with which I had hitherto been regarding the 
affairs of Russia was instantly removed. One of these 
reports read thus : 

July i6 (our date 28), 1890. 
I was invited by the priest Ivanovski to be present at 
his house in the assumed character of a relation of the po- 
padya (the priest's wife) from Novomoskovski, when the 
moujik Nicolai Nicolaivitch woidd come to talk about re- 
ligion. The moujik: s wife came zvith him a7id took part 
in the discussion. During the talk this woman spoke 
disrespectfully of the Czar. A. K. 

Another one bearing the same date, but a different 
signature, read : 

I was one of a party in the traktir of Petro Paulovitsch, 
drinking tea. The party consisted of myself (here came 
several names which we couldn't remember); the con- 
versation ivas about the badness of the harvest in the 
proviftce. A lexander Petrovitsch (or Petrovski) expressed 
the belief that the Czar would not allow any grain to be 



214 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

exported ; zvhereupon Ivan Ivanovitsch spoke badly of the 
Czar. I. P. 

Another paper seemed to be a description of our 
own case, since it spoke of a " Russian and a foreigner 
traveling together ; " but before anything further could 
be secured we were interrupted. Under the circum- 
stances, expecting some one to appear on the scene at 
any moment, it was impossible to copy the reports 
verbatim, so that the names in them will not be identi- 
cal ; but for all practical purposes these are authentic 
copies. 

Comment on them is almost superfluous. Two 
hours later we were once more riding over the free 
steppe, and it seemed to me that our horses were 
carrying us away from purgatory. 

All along the route from Moscow I had been im- 
pressed by the loyalty of the moujiks to the Czar. The 
village priests, though a thoroughly drunken and dis- 
solute set, I had regarded chiefly as '' small rogues," 
bent on making as much as they could out of the igno- 
rance and credulity of the peasants, and cutting, on 
the whole, a comical rather than a harshly disreputable 
figure in the country. To come suddenly and unex- 
pectedly on one seriously plotting with the secret 
police, inviting one of them to come to his house and 
pose as a relative of his wife on a visit, in order to play 
the spy on the parishioner who was coming to have a 
talk with him about religion, was like stumbling on a 
ghastly corpse. 

As for the wretched moujiks, their fatal delusion, 
based on their impenetrable ignorance, can only be 
called pitiable. 



A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION. 215 

No comment is necessary in regard to the Czar. 
Everybody who knows him personally agrees that he is 
an amiable man and a model husband. 

In the post-offices and all public rooms of the prov- 
inces of South Russia hangs a picture of the Czar. 
One day we called in the post-office of Ekaterinoslav 
to inquire for letters. No ikons were visible, so I did 
not remove my hat, as I was accustomed to do, in 
deference to the religious customs of the people, where 
there were ikons. 

In a moment an official stepped up to me and de- 
manded in an overbearing tone, " Please remove your 
hat ! " 

" But there are no ikons in the room," I said, look- 
ing around. 

*' Ah, but there is an ikon," he returned. 

*' Where is it, then?" 

" There it is ; that's an ikon ! " he half shouted, 
officiously. And he pointed to a cJironio of his most 
amiable Majesty the Czar. 

Not caring to jeopardize the success of my ride to 
the Crimea, I removed my hat. 

But one could not help wondering whether the Czar 
knows how utterly ridiculous this attempt to deify his 
chromos appears in the eyes of foreigners. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 

WE were now in a country where a large share of 
the population were secretly and openly dissen- 
ters from the Orthodox Greek Church, and by no 
means so loyal to the Russian government as the peo- 
ple of the provinces we had traversed on the way from 
Moscow. The steppes of Southern Russia are dotted 
over with the villages of colonists from Germany, who 
have settled there at various periods of the past two 
centuries. These people have stubbornly clung to their 
Protestantism, and have infused a spirit of restless 
skepticism in regard to the efficacy of the dead ceremo- 
nials of the Orthodox Church, in the minds of a large 
share of the Russian and Cossack population. More- 
over, their attitude toward the Czar and his government 
differs from the blind infatuation of the Orthodox 
moujiks, in that they are intelligent, reasoning beings, 
who have brought from Germany or inherited from 
their German-born parents the logic and philosophy of 
Teuton civilization. 

They have also imported into the country the Teu- 
ton's methodical and thrifty habits of life ; and on the 
road beyond Ekaterinoslav we began to meet prosper- 
ous looking farmers, driving fat teams of horses in 
strong, gayly-painted wagons, the like of which my com- 
panion from the old Muscovite capital had never set 

216 



MV INTERPRETER RETURNS. 217 

eyes on before, and which the improvident moujiks of 
the north and central provinces had never yet dreamed 
of. Sascha regarded these German colonists, dressed 
in decent clothes and driving to town in wagons as 
good as the wagon of an American farmer, with aston- 
ishment. Here were peasants of a status that were to 
him, on this, his first acquaintance with them, a posi- 
tive enigma. While he could not but agree with me, 
when I suggested that if all the peasants of the Rus- 
sian Empire were as thrifty and prosperous as these it 
would be a tremendous improvement on the present 
state of affairs, his agreement was a very reluctant, half- 
hearted admission. 

*' These people," said he, " are better than our mou- 
jiks for earning money and cultivating the soil, but 
they are not warm-hearted like the moujiks." 

Ninety-nine Russians out of a hundred would have 
given this same answer. It is the stock excuse that the, 
educated Russian always has ready at the end of his 
tongue when a question of comparison is raised be- 
tween the moujiks and the more thrifty and enterpris- 
ing peasantry of other nationalities, — '^ Our moujiks are 
warm-hearted." 

There certainly is something to be said on this score, 
not only of the moujiks, but of all classes of Russians 
who remain true to their Slav nature, and unaffected 
by contact with the pride and individualism of the West. 
One must almost necessarily be a Slav himself, however, 
to fully appreciate the advantages and beauty of that 
maudlin warmth of heart that leads big-whiskered cav- 
alry officers to kiss one another in the public streets, and 
bear-like moujiks to slobber over and hug each other 



2l8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

when in their cups. Few Americans but would much 
rather be kicked than kissed by a man ; and the better 
educated Russians are nowadays getting to be more 
reserved in the matter of public osculatory greetings 
between man and man. 

We put up at a post-station, the first night out from 
Ekaterinoslav, twenty-five versts from the scene of our 
late detention and worrying by the police. A young 
Pole, in the uniform of an infantry regiment, here 
weighed the hay and measured the oats for our horses. 
His regiment was stationed at Ekaterinoslav, and, like 
most of the soldiers who comprised its rank and file, was 
endeavoring to augment his fat pay of two rubles and 
seventy-five kopecks (one and a half dollars) a year, by 
working in the harvest fields. He was permitted to 
work out, he said, twenty-five days a month. During 
harvest he could earn three rubles a fortnight, for which 
he had to work about sixteen hours a day ; at other 
times from three to four rubles a month when he could 
get anything to do. This youth, buried in a Russian 
regiment, a thousand miles from home, was still 
at heart every inch a Pole, as every Pole continues to 
be wherever you happen across one. '* I'm not a Rus- 
sian," he said, the first chance he had of speaking 
about himself, " I'm a Pole." 

From this station we made a detour of about twenty 
versts off the main road to visit the historic grounds 
of the Zaparozhian Cossacks, on the Dneiper. Our 
way was over the rolling steppe, Avhich was here 
and there distinguished by a mound about twenty 
feet high and fifty in diameter, surmounted by a 
WQoden cross. These were the graves of the ol4 



MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 219 

Cossack hetmans of the Zaparozhian military re- 
public, the headquarters of which were on a group 
of islands in the Dneiper, and which we have been 
made familiar with in " Taras Bulba," and other works 
relating to the Cossacks. The Cossacks have disap- 
peared, and the wild, free steppe, which we read of in 
connection with them in the heydey of the Zaparozhian 
sech^ is mostly under cultivation. Nothing remains to 
distinguish the spot, as historically significant in con- 
nection with them and their period, but the lone crosses 
on the mound graves of their hetmans, and names 
rudely scratched on the rocks on the islands in the 
Dneiper. 

They were a fighting, carousing, turbulent set of 
horsemen, who were always at war with the Turks, 
Poles, and Russians. Under their famous hetman 
Mazeppa, they joined Charles XII, of Sweden, against 
Peter the Great, on the battle-field of Poltava in 1709; 
and the punishment inflicted on them by the Czar for 
joining his enemies was the beginning of their end as a 
semi-independent people. They were afterward con- 
cerned in the great Cossack rebellion, under Pugachev, 
in the reign of Catherine II ; in revenge for which 
Catherine broke up their establishment on the Dneiper 
entirely. 

On the banks of the Dneiper, opposite the islands 
on which were the Zaparozhian permanent military 
camps, called the seek, is now to be found as meek and 
unpretentious a village of grain-growers as are to be 
found in all Russia. A peculiarity of the villages 
hereabout was the remarkably small size of the horses. 
Compared to the wagons and huge wagon-loads of rye 



2 20 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

and wheat which they were hauling in from the fields, 
they seemed ridiculously undersized. On the unculti- 
vated parts of the steppe now also began to appear 
big flocks of merino sheep, and the rude day-shelters of 
the shepherds. 

Finding nothing to justify a halt at Zaparozhia, we 
rode on, and for the night regained the main road and 
the post-station of Kanseropol. The sun was melting 
hot, the way was dusty, and the bare, drouth-deadened 
steppe insufferably dreary to the eye. The heat, the 
dust, the hard fare of the villages, and the dreary 
monotony of the southern steppes, had, ever since 
leaving Kharkoff, been particularly rough on Sascha. 
His sanguine idea of a "two month's picnic on horse- 
back " had, of course, vanished like a shadow ere we 
had been on the road a week. Though a pleasant 
companion enough, and a very useful one in my case, 
his moral stamina was not equal to the prolonged 
hardships and discomforts of the ride. For two weeks 
past he had been a good deal of a drag, wavering daily 
between the ambition to finish what he had set out to 
do, and a hankering after the comforts of his home- 
life in Moscow. 

By appealing to his pride, and reminding him of the 
sorry figure he would cut in the eyes of his sweetheart, 
who had decorated him with roses at Tula ; and of his 
brother and friends in Moscow, should he return with- 
out having finished the ride, I had managed to per- 
suade him along as far as Kanseropol. Here, how- 
ever, finding the sun growing hotter and the discom- 
forts of the road increasing rather than diminishing, 
he decided to return to Ekaterinoslav, sell his horse. 



MV INTERPRETER RETURNS. 221 

and go back home. More than two thirds of our jour- 
ney were accomplished ; twelve or fourteen days' ride 
would bring us to Sevastopol, but Sascha was thor- 
oughly demoralized. 

"I am like Hamlet," said he, as he lay on his back 
in the stable, mentally balancing the ignominy of a 
retreat, and the hard experiences of the road to suc- 
cess. *' I am like Hamlet ; I don't know ivJiat to do." 
He at length decided to return. 

I had been so well satisfied with his intelligence and 
readiness to give information that it was no more than 
just to treat him very liberally in the niatter of funds, 
so that he might enjoy himself for a time in Moscow 
by way of compensation for the discomforts he had 
experienced on the ride. In some respects, however, 
I was not sorry at the prospect of finishing the trip 
without him. He was possessed of many traits that 
were endurable enough and even valuable, so long as 
I was interested in them as an exposition of the Rus- 
sian character; such as a curious sort of suspicion as 
to the motives of well-nigh everything I said or did 
from day to day, and an equally Russian shortcom- 
ing in the matter of reliability ; but which had become 
by this time very annoying. His virtues, however, it 
is but fnir to say, outweighed his faults, and the latter 
were such as seem to be inherent in well-nigh every 
Russian. 

Though riding on horseback day after day had 
turned out to be more of a fatiguing task than a picnic, 
and his native country had been a revelation to him in 
the matter of heat and dreariness, the ride had never- 
theless been profitable in many ways, he said, during 



2 2 2 THR UGH K US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

our parting conversation at Kanseropol. Among other 
tilings, he had been quietly studying the Americans — 
with me for his model. Now, he thought, he might 
say he knew them thoroughly. Among their most 
conspicuous traits was a peculiar fondness for dogs, 
horses, and little children. They never said what they 
didn't mean, and always did what they said they were 
going to do. (To the Russian mind the latter traits 
must have seemed, indeed, remarkable.) 

But the most peculiar thing he had learned about 
them, was that they never made a big fuss about little 
things. This latter important characteristic was dis- 
covered by him, it appeared, from an incident that 
occurred between us somewhere on the road between 
Kurskh and Kharkoff. I remembered the occasion as 
he recalled it. The whimsical idea had occurred to 
him to give his horse a feed of white bread for its mid- 
day meal. Replying to his request, I simply answered 
*'very well." This laconic reply to so extraordinary a 
proposition as feeding his horse white bread, struck 
him as being so very remarkable that he had remem- 
bered it and treasured it up as peculiarly American. 
Two Russians, he said, would have discussed the sub- 
ject pro and con for an hour, and have made observa- 
tions about it for days afterward. 

And so it came about that after Kanseropol, Texas 
and I were thrown upon our own resources and society. 
He and Sascha's horse had, of course, grown attached 
to each other; but just how strong this attachment 
had become was not apparent until the hour of their 
forcible separation. Though mine was the hand that 
fed him, and Sascha's horse was an atrocious pilferer 



MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 223 

who was forever trying to get at his oats, and often bit 
him into the bargain, when it came to choosing be- 
tween us, Texas, inconsistent as Polly Ann, who jilted 
her policeman lover in favor of the thief he had cap- 
tured making off with her purse, went back on his 
human friend and protector without a moment's hesita- 
tion. 

Texas's strongest points, next to his timidity, were his 
appetite for oats and barley, and his extremely sociable 
disposition. His big, sociable heart rebelled energeti- 
cally against the forcible sundering of two companions, 
who had for a month past fed out of the same trough, 
drank out of the same bucket, shared the same stable, 
yearned for one another's oats, took snap bites at each 
other's ribs, fought flies together, and shoulder to 
shoulder had safely passed through the ordeal of 
inspection at the hands of the old ladies, S. P. C. A., 
of Ekaterinoslav. He rebelled as I led him alone out 
of the postayali dvor; and as though realizing all at 
once the dismal significance of this new departure, 
uttered a whinnying neigh of deep and fearful yearning. 

This musical evidence of a broken heart was re- 
peated at brief intervals for several miles along his 
lonely way ; and when, the day getting hot, and his 
anxiety about his chum producing moisture under the 
saddle, I essayed to walk and lead him awhile, Texas 
bluntly refused to lead. All efforts to reason with him 
and to win him over by stroking him on his white nose 
proved abortive. His only response would be a look 
of melting reproach, and an effort to wheedle me into 
turning back. 

For three days this sort of struggle went on ; the 



2 24 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

only three days on the entire journey when I remained 
in the saddle for the whole forty to fifty versts a day. 
This would never do. Saddle-sores would inevitably 
result ; for only by watching him with never-flagging 
solicitude had I kept him in good condition through 
the long, weary drag in the sweltering heat and dust of 
the Russian midsummer. Even on the morning of the 
fourth day he refused to lead, except toward the North. 

But that morning, as I rode along, there flashed into 
my mind a cartoon I had once seen of a donkey race, 
in which the victory had been won by an ingenious 
jockey who held a carrot on the end of a stick a foot 
or two in front of his ass's nose. In its eagerness to 
reach the carrot, the donkey put on such a tremendous 
burst of speed that it immediately outstripped its 
competitors and won the race. 

There were no carrot-gardens on the steppe ; but 
there were occasional patches of Indian corn, the sight 
of which always aroused in Texas the criminal cov- 
etousness of a born kleptomaniac. A handful of the 
green succulent blades, or a half-ripe nubbin covertly 
stolen from a way-side patch, would excite in him such 
gastronomic felicity that the juice would run out of 
his mouth ; and he was humbly thankful even for the 
small privilege of being allowed to dip down his head 
and secure a half-dry husk or cob which some Kiev 
pilgrim or harvest tramp had dropped in the road after 
gnawing off the grain. By diplomatically playing off 
this inordinate love of green maize against his stubborn 
sorrow at the departure of his chum, I eventually suc- 
ceeded in first getting him to lead, and at length even 
to following meekly at my heels* 



MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 225 

At first it was necessary to carry a bunch of blades 
and permit him to get a nibble at tolerably regular in- 
tervals of time, as I walked before him rein in hand, 
and for a day or two he seemed to be in a state of 
mental bewilderment, as though unable to decide be- 
tween the old love of his friend and the new love of 
Indian corn. By the third day of the new experiment, 
however, and the sixth day after the parting at 
Kanseropol, Indian corn had completely won him over, 
and now that he had forgotten his old companion he 
seemed to have resolved on making up to the only 
friend he now had to turn to, the owner of the hand 
that fed him blades of maize. 

The road I was now traversing led to the considera- 
ble town of Nicopol on the Dneiper. Villages and 
habitation were farther apart than on any portion of 
the way thus far traversed ; the population here averag- 
ing but about fifteen to the square verst. For much 
of the way, however, the land was under cultivation, 
being farmed in large tracts by capitalists and 
speculators. 

On the road crowds of people were met on foot, in 
holiday costumes, wending their way from Nicopol 
and adjacent villages to Ekaterinoslav. All carried 
bottles, and their mission was to attend some religious 
ceremony, where a priest would bless water and make 
it holy ; the bottles were for the purpose of carrying 
back some of this holy water to their homes. The 
pilgrims were mostly women of the peasant class, and 
their faces were a remarkable study. They were nearly 
all strong, square-jawed faces, reminding me of Indian 
squaws, and eloquent of great powers of physical endur- 



2 26 THRO UGH R US ST A ON A MUS TANG. 

ance. When I met these gangs of female pilgrims, it 
was one of the hottest days of the entire ride. The 
sun seemed as fierce as in India. Yet these hardy 
females trudged along, some with no covering, save 
that provided by nature, on their heads ; others with 
but a kerchief, and all apparently indifferent to its rays. 
Many of them I met whilst halting at a post-station ; 
and so indifferent were they to the fierce glare of the 
sun, that had produced so demoralizing an effect on my 
Moscow-bred companion, that when they stopped at 
the station to regale themselves with the bread and 
hard-boiled eggs they carried, they didn't even trouble 
to sit in the shade. Moreover, the station-keeper, 
when two or three of them did take shelter in front of 
his house in the only shady spot, ordered them away 
on the grounds that he wasn't keeping a traktir. 

Here, in the sturdy powers of endurance and the 
great patience of these peasant wives and mothers, one 
seemed to be in intimate touch with the real secret of 
Russia's strength and formidableness as a military 
power. Patience under difficulties and hardships and 
the power to endure extreme heat and cold, and to 
live on and be contented with the coarsest fare, were 
traits that were written in every lineament of these 
women's faces. Such women breed good material for 
soldiers — soldiers capable of campaigning without 
tents, and with the rudest of commissary departments. 
It is on these negative virtues of her people that Rus- 
sia will have to depend, for many a year to come, to 
sustain her in case of conflict with any of the great 
Western powers. Here, as I sat on the shady side of 
the post-station, watching these women seated on the 



MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 227 

ground partaking of their coarse fare, stoically happy 
under conditions that I, who had roughed it in India, 
Africa, Afghanistan, and China, would have regarded 
as the height of indiscretion, the homely boast of the 
Russians, that, " what is death to the foreigner is life 
to a Russian," came home to me in its full signifi- 
cance. 

Here, too, was fanaticism, that other quality which 
the military authorities of Russia turn to good account 
on the field of battle. The Russian soldier always 
fights in a holy as well as a national cause, and, no less 
than the Turk, believes that death on the field of bat- 
tle is a passport to paradise. And these, their wives, 
mothers, and sisters, were tramping a hundred versts 
through the heat and dust, in preference to riding by 
rail or boat, because they believed there was virtue in 
undergoing toil to get the holy water. 

The population of Nicopol, or the business part of 
it, seemed to consist largely of Jews and Germans. 
The hotel was kept by a German family, and was 
a tremendous improvement on the native-managed 
caravanserai. "English spraken ? " said the worthy 
and fairly energetic hostess. '' Ah, beefsteak ! " And 
fifteen minutes later I was doing ample justice to a 
smoking steak and a bottle of lager beer. 

My road from Nicopol was down the eastern bank 
of the Dneiper, whose waters came into view near by, to 
the left, many times a day. The people of the little 
villages I passed through were inordinately suspicious. 
Each contained a sort of policeman in ordinary peas- 
ant garb, and whose only badge of authority seemed 
to be a disk of tin as large as a blacking-box, stamped 



2 28 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

with a number, and which was suspended from the 
neck with a yellow cord. 

Ettabozaluk was the name of the hamlet where the 
first sample of this particular brand of traveler-worriers 
came into the theater of my Russian road experiences. 
Drawing rein at the village traktir, in the middle of the 
forenoon, in quest of something to drink, the uncouth 
crowd of villagers and moujiks that are always loafing 
about these places were instantly attracted by the 
appearance of an evidently foreign horseman. Com- 
ments, as usual, were indulged in of the most naive ^.wd^ 
unreserved character. The more officious demanded 
to see my '■^ billet," as a passport is called in Southern 
Russia. 

Seeing that there was no officer among them, I re- 
fused to gratify a curiosity that was nine-tenths sus- 
picion, and merely answered that I was an American. 
Instead of allaying their suspicions, this immediately 
increased them. One old wiseacre declared triumph- 
antly that it was quite impossible that a man on horse- 
back should come from America, because he had heard 
that between that country and Russland there was 
water. A second took quite an indignant fit of sus- 
picion on the grounds that my saddle was not Ameri- 
can but Circassian, a positive proof to his comprehen- 
sive brain that I was trying to deceive them. These 
two subtle discoveries convinced the whole assembly 
that I was grossly deceiving them in saying that I was 
an American, and consequently must be a spy. 

" What was I doing in Russland ? " 

"Oh, admiring it!" {sinaJitrait ; literall}% to look). 
The crowd shook their heads. What kind of block- 



MV INTERPRETER RETURNS. 229 

heads did I suppose them to be to beh'eve that a 
foreigner would ride on horseback through Russia 
merely to see it ? To these poor wretches, born and 
bred in an atmosphere of low, crafty suspicion ; nour- 
ished on it ; educated to it in the school of daily 
experience ; growing old in its baleful shadow ; and 
by the time they reach middle age hardened in it to 
a degree that disfigures their very faces, it seemed 
altogether ridiculous that a foreigner should turn up 
in this strange manner and not be engaged on some 
sinister mission. 

I refused to truckle to their impertinent suspicions, 
however, seeing no one among them who had any 
police authority to demand one's passport, and was 
about riding off, when they seized Texas by the bridle. 
An individual then stepped forward and demanded in 
a tone of authority .to see my passport. There was 
nothing of the policeman about his appearance, how- 
ever, and I demanded to know if he was the uriadnik. 
Fumbling under his moujik's coat, he then produced 
the disk of numbered tin and the yellow cord that 
proclaimed him an official of some peculiarly humble 
degree, but nevertheless an official. 

Fit companions, indeed, to these suspicious villagers, 
seemed another class of inhabitants that now began to 
make themselves conspicuous on the steppe. These 
were tremendous flocks of geese, which were encoun- 
tered feeding about the fields and grassland, miles 
away from any human habitation, and as many miles 
from water. They belonged to villages on the banks 
of the Dneiper,- and flew daily back and forth between 
these distant foraging grounds and the river. 



230 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Beyond Novo Veronsofka the country became more 
and more thinly inhabited. Uncultivated steppe 
characterized the greater part of the way, and big 
herds of horses and cattle, and flocks of sheep, began to 
be the most prominent feature of the day's ride. The 
only habitations seen in a day's ride would be the post- 
stations, from twelve to twenty-five versts apart ; and 
across the steppe, off the road, the stone-walled houses 
of the ranchmen. These ranch-houses, the headquar- 
ters of the herds and flocks, were more like big stone 
barns, and attached to them were square-walled kraals 
for the cattle. Now and then, however, where a 
wealthy landlord and cattle owner lived on his own- 
estate, some pretense to embellishment would be seen 
in the form of ornamental gateways, or a porch to the 
house. 

On wheat-growing estates were now seen threshing- 
machines and steam engines, denoting that the land 
of moujiks with small holdings had given place to large 
proprietors who could afford expensive machinery. 
The straw was often built into big hollow squares for 
sheltering cattle in winter ; and, in the shimmering 
heat of the day, mirages would convert such as were 
a couple of miles away, across the level steppe, into 
cities and fortifications. 

An amusing, though often very annoying feature of 
the day's experiences, \\'Ould now be a curious spirit of 
hostility, displayed by the incumbents of the post- 
stations. These gentlemen seemed to think that I 
was setting a dangerous example to the traveling com- 
munity by riding my own horse instead of hiring them 
to convey me from one station to another, as had been 



A/y INTERPRETER RETURNS. 231 

the custom from time immemorial, in that part of the 
country. Some treated me with brusque inhospitaUty ; 
others endeavored to convince me of the superior ad- 
vantages of traveling by post. With my own horse 1 
could only ride forty or fifty versts a day, whilst by 
changing horses at every stanitza I might make more 
than a hundred, etc. 

It was with the utmost difficulty that hay or oats 
were to be procured, except by bribery in the form of 
exorbitant prices. Texas and I were true soldiers of 
fortune these memorable days, and on down through 
the Crimea. To-day a feast, to-morrow a famine, for- 
sooth, though feasts came to him oftener than to his 
rider, since oats were nearly always to be obtained by 
means of extra money, whilst decent human food was 
out of the question except in a city. There were times 
when Texas had to dine the best he could off the 
scanty tufts of wire-grass on the droughty Crimean 
steppe, whilst his master, because he also was not 
herbivorous, came in for no dinner at all. 

The post-boys or yemchiks, at the station-houses, 
were an improvement on their employers, the " Ka- 
zans," in their demeanor, regarding a person riding 
his own horse, as a curiosity rather than a dangerous 
innovation. The chief concern of the yemchicks was 
largess for looking after Texas. One evening a yem- 
chick looked after him so well that he, in conjunction 
with a nest of outraged wasps, created something of 
a circus in the yard. The yemchik tied him to a 
sleigh that had been standing in a corner untouched 
since the previous winter. On the under side of the 
sleigh, unknown to the yemchik, a colony of wasps 



232 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUSTAAG. 

had built their house. Before he had been tied up 
five minutes, one of the wasps, regarding Texas as an 
intruder, sallied out and stung him on the nose ; and 
the commotion that followed brought the entire swarm 
about his ears. Texas started across the yard with 
the sleigh in no ceremonious fashion, and would prob- 
ably have injured himself seriously had the sleigh been 
equal to the knocking about. Luckily it was rotten, 
however, and breaking away from it, he, after consid- 
erable rolling and kicking, came running to me. 

A day's rest was indulged in at Berislav, where the 
Dneiper was crossed on a pontoon bridge. Berislav 
is a dead-and-alive town with one roughly paved street 
that the people use for a promenade in the evening. 
The whole town apparently went to sleep about ten 
o'clock in the morning, and woke up again at four in 
the afternoon for the purpose of drinking tea. Busi- 
ness must have been transacted, I suppose, if there 
was any to transact, before ten and after four. The 
symptoms of the afternoon awakening were boys com- 
ing from every shop in town, to the apology for a hotel 
at which I was staying, with blue enameled kettles for 
hot water to make tea. The hotel-keeper did a roar- 
ing trade in hot water at two kopecks a kettle, but he 
was not overburdened with guests. The only patrons 
that haunted his establishment whilst I was there were 
moujiks from the country, who provided their own food, 
tea, and sugar, as well as feed for their horses. The 
amount one of these customers would contribute to 
the income of the establishment would be about twenty 
kopecks during the day, paid for hot water, and the priv- 
ilege of yard-room for his team and wagon. 



MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 233 

The proprietor of this lively concern was an amiable, 
and, for a Russian, fairly honest young man, who 
kindly informed me that serfage was abolished through- 
out the Czar's dominions; speaking as though he were 
communicating a piece of news that I, being a for- 
eigner, had perhaps not heard of, though the emanci- 
pation must have taken place soon after he came into 
the world. 

Shortly after crossing the Dneiper I happened on an 
old acquaintance that I had last seen in Persia, in the 
form of the neat iron posts and triple wires of the 
Indo-European Telegraph Line. 

From London to Calcutta, overland, by the most 
direct practicable route is somewhere near 8000 miles. 
Stationed here and there at intervals of a few hundred 
miles all along this distance are little groups, or solitary 
British subjects, the links of an active chain of politi- 
cal and commercial sympathy connecting two widely 
separated capitals of the British Empire, the home 
capital and the metropolis of India. The links of this 
great Anglo-Indian chain are strung out through 
Belgium, Germany, and European Russia to Odessa; 
thence through the Crimean Peninsula to Kertch ; 
down through Circassia and Georgia to Tiflis ; across 
Transcaucasia and the Persia frontier to Tabreez. 
From Tabreez they continue on eastward to Teheran. 
At the Persian capital the Indo-European line con- 
nects with the line owned and operated by the Indian 
government. Practically one is but a continuation of 
the other, however, and from Teheran the little groups 
of Englishmen extend on south to Bushire, passing 
through the cities of Ispahan and Shiraz. From 



234 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG, 

Bushire they follow along the Mekran coast through 
Beloochistan into India north of Karachi, where the 
chain, which has been on foreign soil from the west 
coast of Belgiuna, debouches upon British territory. 

These numerous groups and isolated subjects of 
Victoria, Queen of England, Empress of India, are 
simply the working force of the largest and finest- 
equipped telegraph line in the world. From the Bel- 
gian coast to distant India, there stretches one con- 
tinuous long row of splendid iron poles, climbing over 
rugged mountains in the Caucasus; stretched out 
across the level Persian deserts in long, straight 
reaches; protruding like black, tapering stems from the 
white, glaring sand-waves of Beloochistan. My first 
acquaintance with this remarkable telegraph line was 
made at Tabreez, during my bicycle ride around the 
world. In riding from Constantinople, through Ana- 
tolia and Koordistan, I had been accompanied from 
time to time by stretches of dilapidated Turkish line, 
usually one wire mounted on rough poles, twice as far 
apart as they ought to be and leaning toward all points 
of the compass. At Erzeroum I seemed to have got 
beyond the territory covered by the Turkish system, 
and had ridden several days' journey into Persia. 

It was a wild, barbarous country about the Turko- 
Persian border, inhabited chiefly by nomad Koords, 
and I missed even the occasional welcome company of 
the Turkish telegraph line. Its disappearance seemed 
like casting off the last strand of Western civiliza- 
tion. 

At that time I hardly expected to see another tele- 
graph line until I should reach Japan, my intention 



AIV INTERPRETER RETURNS. 235 

being to reach the Pacific through Turkestan and 
China. 

Suddenly one day, when nearing Tabreez, I saw- 
away off on the desert a sight that made me blink and 
rub my eyes to make sure that it was not a mere opti- 
cal illusion I was looking at. The deserts of Persia are 
famous for producing bogus objects — mirages of lakes 
and waving palms ; of lovely castles, and similar fasci- 
nating scenes ; but this time it was none of these. Miles 
away to the north, seemingly suspended in mid-air, was 
a league-long row of telegraph poles, straight as a die, 
even as the pickets of a garden fence. 

As I drew nearer, the line assumed more definite 
form. Its marvelous symmetry, I then discovered, was 
not the enchantment of distance, but a solid reality 
in English iron, with the name of the contracting firm 
stamped on the poles. Every pole tapering from a 
circumference of twenty inches at the bottom to six or 
eight at the top, and, across the dead-level wastes of the 
Persian plains, set up as evenly and perpendicularly as 
they might have been in Hyde Park. It is worth 
noting, perhaps, by the way, that the English always 
take particular pains to have everything of this kind 
very superior in the East ; it is a perpetual source of 
wonder and admiration to the natives; a standing ad- 
vertisement of England's wealth, power, and ability 
to the multitude who have no other way of learn- 
ing. 

From Tabreez I was able to follow this infallible 
guide into Teheran. Often I could see it stretching 
ahead of me mile after mile, the poles so even that they 
seemed not to vary an inch, and disappearing in the 



236 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUSI A NG. 

heavens at the farther end by the curious legerdemain 
of the desert. The aeolian music of its triple wires, as 
the desert breezes played through them, and the mes- 
sages flashed past from India to England, from England 
to India— how companionable it was, that bit of civili- 
zation in a barbarous country, only those who have been 
similarly placed know. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. 

THE country between the crossing of the Dneiper 
and the narrow entrance to the Crimean Peninsu- 
la, at Perekop, is a dead-level, treeless steppe. Broad 
areas are devoted to the production of wheat, and long 
bullock trains were met, hauling the newly harvested 
crop to Berislav for transportation down the Dneiper 
to Odessa. Bullocks, wagons, and drivers looked like 
animated shapes of dust ; the drivers either liked it or 
were too indifferent and lazy to care about keeping out 
of the dense clouds that the oxen kicked up as they 
crawled along. 

Near the river bottom were melon gardens, and it 
seemed to me that there was about one watcher to 
every dozen vines, from which the reader is at liberty 
to draw his or her own most charitable inferences as 
to the character of the passers-by. 

On the wild steppe were numerous flocks of merino 
sheep in charge of Tartar shepherds ; and there now 
began to appear wells for watering them, operated by 
bullocks hauling a rope wound round an enormous 
drum. 

These wells on the Southern steppes are different 
from anything the writer had ever seen before. They 
are the places of rendezvous on the steppe for all sorts 
Hnd conditions of people, who collect about them for 
water and to rest during the heat of the summer's 

237 



238 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

day. To the wayfarer, they are the oasis of the 
steppe ; and the stages of his journey are from one 
well to another. 

At noon on a hot summer's day there may be as 
many as fifty people about one of these wells, not one 
of whom will be there at sundown. There may be 
ten thousand merino sheep and a dozen Tartar shep- 
herds, who will be snoozing the hot hours away inside 
their curious tent-carts, standing in the midst of their 
respective flocks. They have shepherd dogs that have 
more wool on them than the wooliest sheep in the 
flock. Some of these odd-looking canines are so 
loaded down with wool, which grows particularly 
heavy on the legs, that they almost seem incapable of 
waddling along. Wool-growing is one of the principal 
industries of the southern steppes, and the favorite 
sheep seems to be the merino. 

On Wednesday morning, August 6, I reached the 
town of Perekop, and was gratified by a glimpse of 
the Black Sea — a welcome enough sight after the 
monotony of the drouthy steppe. Perekop was an 
abominably hot and dusty hole, containing not one 
redeeming feature beyond its nearness to the sea. A 
few wooden shops and vodka-drinking dens, houses, gov- 
ernment buildings, and a postayali dvor were scattered 
over an area of gray, verdureless soil, in size out of all 
proportion to the number of inhabitants dwelling on 
it — this was Perekop. Situated on the narrowest part 
of the isthmus that connects the Crimean Peninsula 
with the body of Russia, one may stand on the roof of 
one of its houses and see the Black Sea on one side 
and the Azov on the other. 



OJV THE CRIMEAN- STEPPES. ^39 

The keeper of the postayali dvor was a son of Israel, 
who, instead of receiving me with the traditional cor- 
diality of the boniface in dealing with a traveler who 
desires to become his guest, regarded me with such a 
panic of suspicion that he immediately shuffled off 
across the street and reported my arrival and foreign 
appearance to the pristav. Thus it happened that, 
ten minutes after reaching Perekop, a police officer 
walked into the stable, and before I had fairly relieved 
Texas of his saddle, demanded my passport and took 
possession of my saddle-bags. 

Books and papers, even private letters, were criti- 
cally examined by the pristav, who, however, not 
being equal to English, could make nothing of them. 

The only thing he understood was the paper I had 
obtained from the Governor of Ekaterinoslav. He 
hesitated some little time over this, probably suspi- 
cious that it was a forgery, but finally contented him- 
self with making a copy of it ; and after worrying his 
brain for half an hour about my camera, reluctantly 
allowed me to proceed. 

I was now in the Crimea ; and among the experiences 
of the first day's ride in it was the refusal of a landed 
nobleman to grant me the most trifling expression of 
courtesy or hospitality for the night. I arrived at this 
place at dark. He was superintending the watering of 
live stock at the well, and by way of a hint I rode Texas 
up to the trough and watered him. Seeing that the 
gentleman made no offer of hospitality, I requested the 
privilege of tying Texas up in his yard, and sleeping 
there myself for the night. 

*' This is not a postayali dvor," said the nobleman. 



2 40 THR UGH R US SI A ON A MUST A NG. 

I explained that I had not mistaken him for a station- 
keeper, but that it was now dark, my horse was tired, 
the road unfamiliar to me, and the post-station a long 
way off. 

" This is not a house for travelers," he reiterated, and 
turned on his heel by way of bringing the matter to an 
end. 

The night came on very dark, and so, within a couple 
of versts of this gentleman's place, I was compelled to 
tie Texas, supperless, to a telegraph pole, and spread- 
ing my rug on the ground beside him, also supperless, 
wait till morning. 

Nearly all travelers who have spent any length of 
time in Russia agree that the Russians are hospitable. 
The lavish hospitality of the country houses of wealthy 
Russians, and the ostentatious plenty of the Russian 
merchant's table when guests are in his house, have 
been attested by more than one English and American 
traveler. Wallace tells of being the guest in a mer- 
chant's house, where it was difficult to obtain anything 
simpler than sturgeon and champagne ; and the same 
authority, treating this time more particularly of noble- 
men's houses, says: ''Of all the foreign countries in 
which I have traveled, Russia certainly bears off the 
palm in all that regards hospitality. Every spring I 
found myself in possession of a large number of invita- 
tions from landed proprietors in different parts of the 
country, and a great part of the summer was generally 
spent in wandering about from one country house to 
another." 

In spite of my own experiences, then, the Russians are 
hospitable. There is no doubt that a foreigner who 



ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. 241 

goes to Russia and takes the trouble to make himself 
conspicuous and agreeable in St. Petersburg drawing- 
rooms in the winter, will, like the gentleman I have 
just quoted, receive many invitations to country houses, 
and in them meet with most hospitable receptions. 

This is hospitality, of a truth ; but there is a higher 
form of hospitality than this ; and it is to this higher 
interpretation of the word and its meaning that my 
own experiences must be applied. 

Primal hospitality, as the writer understands it, is 
not so much the readiness to receive into your house 
a gentleman who has made a favorable impression on 
you at a social gathering, as a willingness to entertain 
the passing stranger, in need of assistance, whom you 
never saw before, and never expect to see again. This 
is the test that is applicable to a country where dis- 
tances are great and the traveler liable to find himself 
fatigued or benighted where public accommodation is 
not to be found. 

Possibly this sort of hospitality prevails in Russia, 
as well as the secondary stage ; which might be termed 
its European, or civilized expression, as against its 
Asiatic interpretation. I can only say that if so, it 
was my misfortune to see absolutely nothing of it, un- 
til, during the last two or three days' ride, T came in 
contact with the Crimean Tartars. We were hospitably 
entertained by Count Tolstoi' ; and near Kharkoff, as 
earlier pages explain, we stumbled upon the family of 
a Rostoff shipping agent, who were summering there, 
and who likewise showed us hospitality. 

But apart from these two cases of exceptional cir- 
cumstances, we received not so much as a solitary glass 



24^ THR UGlI R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

of milk from one end of Russia to the other without 
buying it. This, among the poverty-hardened moujiks 
was, of course, not be expected, nor desired. But in 
the middle of a scorching hot day, I have ridden up 
to a nobleman's house in Southern Russia, and with a 
voice husky from thirst inquired for milk, where there 
was evidently no lack of an abundance of that article, 
and received a negative answer, embittered with a 
stare of mingled curiosity and suspicion. 

Mayhap it was all owing to their miserable suspi- 
cions of me that their reception was so inhospitable and 
boorish ; but, whatever the cause, it upset completely 
all my preconceived ideas, as well as the preconceived 
ideas of their Moscow compatriot, my companion, who 
likewise was disappointed in this same manner north 
of Ekaterinoslav. 

The day after being turned away from the big land- 
owner's door to pass the night supperless on the 
steppe, I reached a wayside traktir. The principal 
article of consumption there was vodka, and the cus- 
tomers were a mixed company of Russian and Tartar 
shepherds. Besides vodka were black bread and the 
inevitable barrel of cucumbers in brine. These precious 
commodities were kept in a corner of the room which 
was railed off from the rest by means of perpendicular 
wooden bars. Behind these bars, looking through, like 
a prisoner in a cell, was the proprietor, a black-whisk- 
ered Semitic-looking gentleman, with a nose as purple 
and ripe-looking as a luscious plum : a nose that must 
have cost him barrels of vodka to bring to such a state 
of perfection ; and which was seen to singular advan- 
tage when he thrust it through the wooden bars. 



ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. 243 

The Russians and Tartars sat carousing around rude 
wooden tables, their feast consisting of the above- 
mentioned epicurean ingredients. Now and then the 
purple-nosed proprietor would pass out through the 
bars a refilled bottle of vodka, a handful of squashy 
cucumbers, with the brine streaming through his fingers, 
or a piece of bread. These Tartar shepherds have 
yielded to the influence of their Russian surround- 
ings, and, though still nominally Mohammedans, drink 
vodka as freely as the moujiks. While I was there, an 
ancient Tartar dame drove up in a ramshackle one- 
horse telega, bringing a sack of newly threshed wheat 
to swap for vodka. She was as shriveled as a mummy, 
and must have been eighty years old. 

In the eyes of the Tartars it was a recommendation 
to their good will that I had been to Stamboul and 
knew a few words of Turkish. 

Even here, in this rude company, the difference in 
the two races was oddly conspicuous to the casual 
looker-on. The vodka was paid for chiefly by the Tar- 
tars and consumed chiefly by the Russians. A boozer 
of the latter nationality, be he never so fuddled, 
always took care to pour down his throat about two 
glasses to his Tartar comrade's one, out of the bottle 
that had been ordered through the bars by the Tartar. 
These Crim Tartars, indeed, seemed to be a particularly 
generous-souled set of people so far as my passing ex- 
perience of them enabled me to judge. 

Another hot, dreary day across the level steppe, on 
which, however, was seen at one point the agreeable 
oasis of a German colonist settlement, — a village of neat 
white houses, with red tiles, and an avenue of trees 



2 44 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

along the streets ; and on the following morning there 
appeared on the southern horizon the irregular out- 
lines of the Yaila Mountains. It was the landmark 
indicating the end of my ride on horseback. 

Though there is nothing in the shape of a mountain 
all the way from the frozen limits of the Russian 
Empire to the north, on the longitudinal line of my 
journey, my last two days' ride would be over moun- 
tain roads. The Yaila Mountains fringe the southern 
shore of the Crimean Peninsula, which in all other 
parts wa§ as monotonous as any other part of the ride. 
The mountains were as welcome a sight as land after a 
long sea voyage ; so w^elcome, indeed, that a sense of 
depression, born of the monotony of the steppe, im- 
mediately gave way to something akin to the enthusi- 
asm of a new discovery. *' Hail ! blessed mountains !" 
was the mental greeting called forth by their first 
revelation ; the truism, that our appreciation of a 
thing is in direct proportion to its scarcity, applies no 
less to mountains than to any other object. 

In these mountains, at Yalta, is an Imperial palace, 
where members of the Imperial family sometimes 
reside, coming all the way from St. Petersburg to enjoy 
the luxury of mountain scenery and air. 

They seemed yet more to be appreciated as I drew 
near them in the evening, and found that they had 
conjured into existence, rows of stately poplar trees, 
orchards of luscious fruit, and acres of productive 
melon gardens by the roadside, where one could halt 
and obtain from the Tartar melon gardeners the 
choicest of *' karpooses." 

Here it was, too, that I once again experienced, at 



ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. 245 

the hands of the Tartars, that simple, spontaneous 
hospitah'ty which had charmed me, years before, among 
the Turks of Asia Minor. The day before, I was 
among a grasping, overcharging set of Crimean Jews, 
who had charged me for the privilege of watering 
Texas at their well ; now I was invited to halt, and 
help myself to melons, by a Tartar who refused money 
when I offered to pay. 

The remainder of the ride to Sevastopol was over 
mountainous, stony roads, for the most part a govern- 
ment military chaiissee. This chaiiss^e connects Sevas- 
topol with Simferopol, the governmental capital of the 
Crimea, and is in slow process of extension to the 
north. The idea is to eventually connect it with the 
road I had followed from Moscow to Kharkoff. 

Though hilly and frightfully hot, the novelty of the 
change was keenly appreciated, though probably less 
so by Texas than his rider. His compensation for the 
hills he had to climb was the novel luxury of slices of 
watermelon, and the rinds of the same, which he 
seemed to relish as keenly as the green maize with 
which, a few days before, I had cajoled him into for- 
getting Sascha's horse and warming toward his master. 
By this time the remarkably social disposition which 
had formerly distinguished him in his demeanor to- 
ward his equine associate had developed into some- 
thing more than mere sociability toward the only com- 
panion he now had to claim his attentions. 

Whether it was the magic influence of green maize 
and slices of watermelon, or because I had, during the 
past few days, fed him chiefly on barley, which he 
liked better than oats, was past finding out ; but he 



246 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

had now become so affectionate that he would follow 
me about like a dog — always excepting when I at- 
tempted to lead the way across a bridge or toward a 
stream of water when he wasn't thirsty. The horror 
of wetting his feet and of crossing bridges, which he 
had exhibited the first day out from Moscow, was at 
the end of the journey as much of a quarrel between 
us as at the beginning. 

Occasionally the road led through charming little 
valleys, with gurgling streams, devoted to the cultiva- 
tion of pears, plums, and grapes. Vineyards were sur- 
rounded with stone walls, the handiwork of Greek 
proprietors, of which there were a fair sprinkling 
among the population. Nicopol, Melitopol, Simfero- 
pol, and the many other 'opols of this part of Russia 

told the story of the old Byzantium Empire. 

Beside the Greeks and Tartars, gypsies were now en- 
countered, camps of basket-makers by the wayside un- 
derneath the trees. The women were importunate to 
sell me a basket or tell my fortune ; the men to buy, sell, 
or swap a horse. The children ran alongside Texas 
begging for kopecks ; the very doubles of those who, 
four years before, had raced beside my bicycle in Hun- 
gary begging for kreutzers, and again in India, for 
pice. All were alike, save that those encountered in 
India had darker skins, teeth of more dazzling white- 
ness, and eyes even more black and flashing than their 
relatives of Hungary and the Crimea. 

Nor was the muse forgotten by the good genii of 
these magic mountains. Wherever there are moun- 
tains, Greeks, and grapes, the wandering minstrel 
appears on the scene as a necessary part of the local 



ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. 247 

coloring of the picture. The noontide halt of the last 
day but one of the ride was made in the o]d Tartar 
town of Bekchiserai, where the population is now 
chiefly Greek and Tartar. Here a band of itinerant 
Greek musicians regaled my ears with the only music, 
save of military bands, that had been heard on the 
journey. 

All through Malo Russia, the land of the balalaika, 
not a solitary twang of that instrument had been 
heard; the dead level of the eternal steppes seemed to 
have found an echo in the monotony of the people's 
pursuits, which were the gratification of their animal 
wants. After harvest, possibly, the Little Russian pic- 
ture might have brightened somewhat ; but the 
absorbing concern of the population, as they came 
under my observation was, monotonously, — work, food, 
and money. 

But the mountains introduced the pleasure-loving 
Greeks ; and so here at Bekchiserai were musicians at 
mid-day, and the little girls dancing graceful Hellenic 
measures to the playing. There was an element of doubt 
as to whether this was altogether an improvement, 
however, on the Little Russians, from their own 
standpoint, so much as it was from mine ; unless, 
indeed, the main object of life is the seeking of but- 
terfly pleasures. As compared with the children of 
the Russian villages, the little Greek girls were amus- 
ingly precocious. Small misses of eight and ten danced 
and posed in rivalry for the applause of the lookers-on, 
as soubrettes on the stage ; and some of them smoked 
cigarettes, producing paper and tobacco from their 
pockets to roll them. 



248 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

At Bekchiserai, and other neighboring places, were 
old Tartar tombs and mosques. Both Perekop and 
Simferopol have Tartar quarters, with mosques and 
minarets. The latter are neither tall nor conspicuous, 
however, being completely overshadowed by the 
splendid Russian churches. It seemed rather rough on 
the Tartars, too, as showing scant consideration for the 
religious susceptibilities of a subject people, to find 
some of the domes of the Orthodox churches orna- 
mented with devices proclaiming the triumph of the 
Cross over the Crescent. This sort of thing is flaunted 
in the face of any Tartar who looks at a Russian 
church throughout Russia south of KharkofT. A 
favorite device is a Cross towering above a Crescent, 
with Gabriel perched on the top of the Cross blowing 
his trumpet. 

But there seems to be no friction whatever between 
the two races, on account of their religious differences; 
probably owing to the fact that no proselyting is 
attempted on either side. In many villages of the 
Crimea, as well as in the provinces of Samara and 
.Kazan on the Volga, one side of the street is Tartar, 
the other Russian ; and the two rub along together in 
perfect harmony without actually mixing any more 
than is necessary for the transaction of business. 

It was in such a village as this that I passed the last 
night on the ride ; a place called Baalbek, about 
twenty-five versts from Sevastopol. I had been loiter- 
ing at a Tartar melon garden during the afternoon, and 
reached Baalbek at dark. The place contained no 
public accommodation for man and beast traveling in 
an independent manner, though there was a post- 



ox THE CRIME A. V STEPrES. 249 

station, where travelers by the regular Russian post 
might stay. Here the proprietor, a Russian, either 
from suspicion of what I might be, or from prejudice 
because I was riding my own horse, or from sheer in- 
hospitality and indifference, refused either to sell me 
any feed or stable room for Texas for the night. 

On the opposite side of the street, some young Tar- 
tars, who were drinking coffee in front of a little coffee 
shop, seeing the dilemma of a passing stranger, came 
over to the rescue at once. They had neither horse- 
feed nor stable ; but one of them led Texas away to 
ivater, then tied him up in a little private yard on their 
side of the village ; and another skirmished around 
and obtained a bunch of ha)^. Bread, a boiled sheeps- 
head, and coffee were obtained for supper, and I was 
provided with a rude divan in the coffee shop for a bed. 
I had at length, after six weeks in the saddle, arrived 
among a people who neither regarded me with sus- 
picion, nor as a windfall to be overcharged and finan- 
cially made the most of. 

From Bekchiserai I was riding over historically in- 
teresting ground. Between Simferopol and Baalbek 
I watered Texas in the Alma, a small stream from 
which the well-known battle of the Crimean War de- 
rived its name ; and an hour or two from Baalbek the 
evidences of the struggle of 1854 were on every hand. 
Dismantled batteries still frowned from the heights of 
Inkerman, as though the ghosts of war still haunted 
the fields of carnage, reluctant to depart. 

Leaving the main road, I picked a way toward 
Sevastopol over the rocky heights on which the bat- 
teries and trenches of the allied armies had invested 



250 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

the city, and between the pits in which the soldiers 
had been buried. 

There was little of interest to arrest the attention 
here, only the remains of the trenches and half-moon 
mounds of the batteries, and everywhere the sunken 
pits of rocks and bowlders which had once been piled 
into mounds above the soldiers* graves. 

By ten o'clock, Monday, August 11, I was in Se- 
vastopol, and by two o'clock of the same day had 
parted — not without a pang of regret — with Texas. 
Here were good hotels, steamships, people who spoke 
English, tourists, and all the comforts of a civilized 
city. I was no longer in Russia, but only on that sur- 
face of it which tourists glide smoothly over by means 
of rail and steamer ; the Russia known to the visitors 
who get their impressions of it by a trip to St. Peters- 
burg and Moscow ; or by making the '* grand tour " by 
rail and by steamer, up the Volga. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 

SMOTHERING, as best we may, a sense of remorse 
and ingratitude at the necessity of leaving in the 
hands of a Sevastopol horse dealer, the gallant little 
horse that had carried me more than a thousand 
miles across the Russian steppes, in the hottest part of 
the year, in six weeks, — June 20 to August 11, — the 
reader is invited to glide with us over the surface of 
Russia, eastward and northward, to take a peep at the 
great fair of Nijni Novgorod. It seems good to get off 
the dreary road, to get away from the heat and fatigue 
and the meager food of the Russian road, to find one's 
self aboard a Black Sea steamer, eating good dinners, 
and sleeping in a fairly comfortable bed. All things 
go by comparison, and though the little Sevastopol 
steamer was by no means an Atlantic grayhound in the 
matter of size, accommodation, or speed, the change 
to its breezy deck from a Cossack saddle and a tired 
mustang, was a jump over a hundred years of progress 
in the path of civilization. 

We touched at Yalta and Kertch, and in three days 
and a half landed at Taganrog. I stayed at Taganrog 
over night, and carried away one vivid impression. It 
was the sign of a barber's shop, opposite my hotel, 
Englished, and it read : " Room for shaving cutting 
hairs and bleed." Our way to Nijni is up the winding 

251 



252 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

Don to Kalatch, thence by a short railroad to the 
Volga, and up that Russian Mississippi to our destina- 
tion. 

Our starting point is Rostoff, a city near the mouth 
of the Don. The boat is a paddle-wheel steamer of 
about two hundred tons burden, and, like the spinster 
in the story, of uncertain age. Fresh paint gives it, 
again like the spinster in the story, the bloom of youth, 
but in the dining-saloon you discover that it was doing 
service on the Don twenty-one years ago, and probably 
several years before. In 1869 the Emperor, Alexan- 
der III, then Czarevitch, ascended the Don in this 
steamer, and his autograph, commemorative of the 
event, written with a lead-pencil on a plaster of Paris 
ground, hangs in the dining-saloon. 

Above it depends a big steel portrait of the Czar, 
and beside it, but in a corner, and curiously inconspicu- 
ous, is a tiny ikon. The size and prominence of pic- 
tures of the Czar and the smallness and unobtrusive 
position of the ikons — those two features of every Rus- 
sian public hall and most private rooms, representing 
** God and the Czar" — were among the writer's most 
vivid impressions of South Russia. 

In a former chapter something was said of the emo- 
tional display on the platforms of Russian railways at 
the departure of a train. A new revelation broke over 
my astonished senses upon the departure of our steamer 
from Rostoff. Every passenger must have had at least 
twenty friends at the landing to see him or her off. 
And the flood of tears, kisses, laughter, injunctions, 
admonitions, and all-around emotion — how can mere 
words depict it? One would think these people were 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 253 

parting for all eternity. At every warning of the 
steamer's whistle the departing one was spasmodically 
seized by first one, then from six to twenty others, and 
kissed as though he or she were the only person in 
the world any of them had ever loved. And after 
it seemed to be all over, and the roustabouts were 
about to remove the gangway, one young woman 
rushed frantically off the boat, and, in defiance of the 
captain, who stamped his foot, and the bell that con- 
tinued to ring, kissed again everybody who had come 
down to see her off, from the red-eyed old grand- 
mother to the blinking and unresponsive infant in its 
nurse's arms. 

The Don is not a large river, though its volume of 
water is considerably larger in the spring than in 
August and September. In August, 1890, the traveler 
could shy a stone across it at most points, and even 
this is apt to convey a false idea regarding its volume. 
Its bed is a tortuous depression in a flat and somewhat 
sandy country, and its shallowness in proportion to its 
width, as well as the scenery, or absence of scenery, on 
its banks, reminds one of the Platte River in Nebraska. 
It differs from the Platte, however, in having much less 
current. To this, and to the fact that it traverses a 
lower and somewhat heavier country, it owes its value 
as a navigable river. 

Before we were well away from Rostoff the steamer 
had to begin whistling and tooting at big lumber- 
rafts that were floating down, with exasperating pla- 
cidity and indifference to up-coming craft, in the only 
channel deep enough to let us pass. These rafts oc- 
cupy two months in descending the river from Kalatch. 



254 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

They contain shipbuilding timber for the Black Sea, 
telegraph poles, railway ties, logs, and firewood. Two 
or three huts, in which the navigators live, are built 
on each, and besides the navigators they sometimes 
carry wood-choppers, who convert logs into firewood on 
the voyage down. 

In reply to our tootings and the threatening gy- 
rations of our irascible little captain's arms, the red- 
shirted raftsmen lazily worked huge sweeps that are 
attached to the fore and rear ends of the raft and 
slowly and grudgingly gave us the channel. The 
captain shook his fist at them as we steamed labori- 
ously by, and removed his eternal cigarette-holder from 
his mouth, as if to annihilate them with a volley of 
invectives. Mindful of the lady passengers at his elbow, 
however, he thought better of it, and blowing the rem- 
nant of the last cigarette away with an impatient puff, 
he lit a new one and sent his orders down the speak- 
ing-tube to put on full speed. 

Our steamer was thoroughly Russian in its disposition 
to make a tremendous fuss about nothing. In re- 
sponse to the captain's orders for full speed its engines 
throbbed and pulsated at a feverish rate, and its 
paddles set up such a prodigious splashing that one 
might easily be deceived into thinking it was making 
fifteen knots an hour, if our surroundings would only 
assist in the delusion. 

Neither the Cossack urchin on the right bank (who 
was amusing himself by keeping up with us) however, 
nor the herd of horses swimming and wading across 
the river ahead of us were to be humbugged by our 
fussy outlay of noise and steam, The youngster easily 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 255 

kept abreast of us at a dogtrot, and the horses refused 
to accept us as a thing to avoid till we took to toot- 
ing and whistling at them, as we did at the raft. 

The country was monotonous, and life on the banks 
of the river might easily have been more picturesque 
and stirring. Our steamer was winding and twisting 
about through the heart of the country of the Don 
Cossacks. We saw these Cossacks on the banks in 
charge of big herds of horses and cattle, and we had 
them, passengers and deck hands, on the boat. On 
shore the passengers saw them galloping about, throw- 
ing the lasso with the expertness of Texas cowboys, 
and as fishermen, in little half-moon boats, they were 
an ever-present feature of the river. But the passen- 
gers looked in vain for the realization of the figure the 
Cossack cuts in romance. 

Where were the picturesque horsemen of the stirring 
tales of Count Tolstoi, and Gogol, of '' The Cossacks," 
and '' Taras Bulba," the descendants of Mazeppa; the 
wild borderers and free-lances of the steppe ? The 
men on horseback looked like ordinary mortals. They 
were neither richly armed nor gorgeously caparisoned. 
In fact, they were armed only with whip and lasso, 
and caparisoned with very sorry-looking saddles and 
bridles. Their only striking feature was a red-banded 
cap and red-striped trousers, which gave them a semi- 
military appearance. Both horsemen and fishermen 
wore these red evidences of their allegiance to the 
Czar. All Cossacks are soldiers. Every able-bodied 
man is under obligation to serve in the army. They 
hold their lands and are exempt from every form of 
Imperial taxation, on the condition of always being 



256 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

ready-equipped with horse and accoutrements to take 
the field. They provide their own horses and saddles 
and the Government supplies them with rifles. 

These ordinary-looking mortals, who squat in their 
cockle-shell craft and spend their days and nights in 
mending fishing-nets and baiting hooks, are the descend- 
ants of the bold buccaneers who used to descend the 
Don in big fleets of these same boats and pounce on 
Turkish galleys in the Sea of Azov, and who, after the 
Crimean War, boasted that they would in the same 
way have captured the British fleets before Sevastopol, 
had the Czar given them permission. 

At times the sinuosities of the way were aggravated 
by a bewildering number of white and red pyramidal 
buoys, and the necessity of obeying their directions to 
prevent running aground. So tortuous was our course, 
half the time, that the passengers of the upper deck, 
under a scant awning, were kept in good exercise mov- 
ing from one side to the other to keep in the shade. 

In spite of buoys, and all other precautions, however, 
we found ourselves aground about once every two 
hours, day and night. 

Among the third-class passengers were several sturdy 
raftsmen, who received a free passage back to Kalatch 
on condition that they lend a hand when the steamer 
runs aground. They assisted her over shallow places 
bymeansof a crude anchor and a cable. The '^ anchor" 
consisted of a beam about thirty feet long, peaked at 
one end, and with an iron cross-bar near the sharpened 
end. Wading ahead a hundred yards or so with this 
beam and the noosed end of the cable, they placed 
the noose over the cross-bar and dipped the sharp end 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 257 

of the beam in the sand. All hands then bore down 
on the long end of the beam, while the steamer was 
hauled forward by working the capstan. 

This process was slow and not always sure. Some- 
times, when the free passengers were complacently 
perched along the beam holding it down, something 
slipped and all were precipitated into the water. 
Passengers are expected to take an interest in over- 
coming the difficulties at these shallow places. The 
sounding-pole betrays the fact that the water is three 
inches deeper on one side of the boat than the other. 
All passengers are then required to crowd over to the 
deep water side to help ease her off. 

Sometimes a station consisted of a housed hulk, and 
sometimes the steamer merely thrust her nose up 
against the bank to let passengers on or off. In the 
latter case a plank was run ashore and a hand-rail im- 
provised by means of a sounding-pole and the shoul- 
ders of a couple of roustabouts, one on deck, the other 
ashore. 

The passengers were the most interesting, and often 
the most amusing, not to say instructive, objects seen 
on the trip. There was a light-haired, light-eyed lady 
with a shrill voice, who flirted all the way with the 
captain and wanted to give orders for him down the 
speaking-tube. Some of these orders are given in 
English on Russian boats, the choicest one of them all 
being " shtop-a-leetle." To hear this lady shout shrilly 
in the speaking-tube " shtop-a-leetle," was one of the 
diversions of the journey, and will always be associated 
with my reminiscences of the Don. 

There was a gray-whiskered army officer who tried 



258 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

to cut out the captain in the esteem of the light-haired 
lady, but failed. This officer looked a general, at least, 
and when talking you felt certain that he was discus- 
sing the movements of monster armies and the manner 
of conducting big campaigns. Since the pale-haired 
lady refused to give up the captain and the speaking- 
tube on his account, however, it is safe to say that he 
was nothing but a senior lieutenant and gave utterance 
to nothing in particular. 

There was an Armenian lady, with three children and 
three nurses, who took as much trouble looking after 
the lot as if they were all children and all in her charge. 

There were merchants who talked rubles and ko- 
pecks all day long, and a couple of seedy-looking 
popes or priests — gentlemen of the cloth. 

The martial element of the company was increased 
at one of the stations by a very much booted, spurred, 
sworded and whiskered Cossack officer, who spoke to 
nobody and smoked cigarettes without a break for an 
hour at a stretch. He looked the very incarnation of 
war. Higher up the river, on a bank that did service as a 
landing-place, was seen, as the steamer turned her nose 
to the shore, another officer who seemed to be a coun- 
terpart of our fellow-passenger. He, too, looked an 
understudy of Mars. Surely the captain was never 
going to commit the folly of bringing together these 
two martial atoms ? Nothing less than a duel could be 
expected from a contact between these two. Come to- 
gether, however, they did, on the bank, in sight of all. 
And the catastrophe that w^e witnessed was such as 
happens when a couple of school-girls meet after vaca- 
tion. Like a pair of amiable misses these whiskered 



Up the DOM AND VOLGA. 259 

Cossacks threw their arms about each other's necks 
and kissed. 

Kalatch is three days' journey by steamboat up the 
Don from Rostoff. The time occupied in reaching it, 
however, conveys to the American altogether a mis- 
leading idea regarding the distance between the two 
places, until he understands the sinuous and shallow 
nature of the river and the extraordinary methods that 
have to be resorted to at times to help the steamer 
along. 

The prominent features of Kalatch were lumber, 
vodka shops, red-shirted lumbermen, and a boat hotel 
for the accommodation of travelers. On the upper 
deck of this floating caravansary, at a near table, were 
a party of Russian travelers. Noticing that I was a 
foreigner, they ceased talking their mother tongue and 
began chattering in French. In a few minutes they 
dropped French and took a turn at German. 

This peculiarity of the traveling Russian had come 
under the observation of the writer many times, and I 
have yet to come to a satisfactory solutioh of their 
motive. The airing of their linguistic accomplishments 
was, on the whole, too modest in its manifestations to 
justify a verdict of ostentation. Their talk was to one 
another and not at the foreigner, whose presence, never- 
theless, undoubtedly had stimulated their tongues to 
the international exercise. 

The explanation that occurs to me as being the 
most probable is this, nearly all Russians of education 
and noble birth learn several languages in their youth. 
English governesses, French teachers, German nurses, 
instructed them in their tender youth, and made these 



2 6o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANC. 

languages as easy to them as their own. The number 
of Russians one meets who once knew these languages, 
and for want of opportunities to speak them have for- 
gotten one or all of them, is surprising. When, there- 
fore, a party of educated Russians suddenly discover 
the proximity of a foreigner, the circumstance reminds 
them of their lingual abilities, which they immediately 
proceed to exercise. 

Shortly after the Crimean war had brought home to 
the Russian government the necessity of improving 
communications, a short line of railroad was built be- 
tween Tzaritzin and Kalatch, connecting the Volga 
and the Don. The railroad was built as a temporary 
expedient and forerunner of a canal, by means of which 
steamers could pass from one river to the other, and it 
early gained the reputation of being the worst piece of 
railway traveling in the world. Two trains a week 
used to start in a venturesome way over it, and the 
chances of running off the rails, or breaking down, 
raised the odds against the travelers to such a level as 
induced many of them to prefer the old way of horses 
and tarantasses. 

August, 1890, the canal had not been dug, but the 
railway had improved with age, for the author found 
nothing disreputable about it save the indifference of 
its management to the flight of time. It now has a 
daily train, and by means of petroleum-refuse fuel, and 
plenty of axle-grease the fifty miles are overcome in 
the brief space of four hours. We should have done 
it in three hours and fifty minutes had not the con- 
ductor lingered at one of the stations, for about ten 
minutes, haggling over the price of a young sturgeon. 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 261 

which a Cossack fisherman had brought to try to sell. 
The conductor succeeded in cheapening the fish twenty 
kopecks (twelve cents), and from the tremendous in- 
terest taken in the transaction by the passengers it is 
fair to presume not one of them had any objection to 
the brief delay of the train. To many of them, no doubt, 
a railway ride was one of those rare pleasures that are 
all the better appreciated for being long drawn out. 

The chief feature at every station were women and 
girls with heaps of watermelons, and the heart's de- 
sire of about every passenger on the train seemed to 
be to obtain a melon at each stopping-place for half 
the price the venders appeared willing to take. The 
number of melons was so ridiculously out of propor- 
tion to the possible number of purchasers that it 
seemed a veritable case of commercial suicide on the 
part of the women to refuse anything that might be 
offered. This glaring evidence of an over-stocked 
market was not by any means lost on the passengers, 
who would not have been Russians if it had been, and 
just before the departure of the train every bargainer 
would secure a melon at reduced rates and hasten 
aboard. Between one station and another the journey 
was a picnic of melon-eaters, who added one day's 
contribution to an already well-defined streak of melon 
rinds on either side of the track. 

Trees and gardens at the pleasant little station 
houses relieved the monotony of the otherwise tree- 
less steppe, and a leather medal should be awarded to 
one of the station-masters who, about midway of the 
line, had produced a flower garden that would be a 
credit to any country. 



262 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

We started at eight o'clock, and in the broad glare 
of the August noon there came into view from the 
windows of the train a dusty-looking town and a river 
broad as the Mississippi, a section of which was 
half hidden by a multitude of rafts and shipping. 
The dusty town was Tzaritzin, and the broad river the 
Volga. 

After a few weeks of experience in knocking about 
Russia, and of the inevitable disillusion of its provin- 
cial towns, one comes to dread, rather than rejoice at 
the prospect of making the acquaintance of a new city. 

The first glimpse of Tzaritzin was peculiarly ominous 
and depressing, and a closer acquaintance with it am- 
ply confirmed one's worse presentiments. People, 
horses, droskies, drivers, houses — everything in it was 
yellow with dust. Dust was ankle deep, even on the 
best parts of the streets; everywhere else the spaces 
that answer the purpose of streets offered the 
most villainous succession of holes and humps that 
ever disgraced a town. On the way from the station 
to the hotel one had to cling to the ramshackle drosky 
with both hands to escape being pitched out, and 
the performance of the dusty jehu in keeping his narrow 
seat was a masterpiece of equipoise. The character of 
horses and droskies was in keeping with the streets, 
as in other places, which in Tzaritzin means that the 
former were the scum of the herds on the adjacent 
steppes, and that the latter were calculated to inspire 
in the mind of the passenger visions of broken bones. 

Happily, my acquaintance with this dust-hole of a 
city, as well as its hotel, was destined to be brief. The 
caravansary in question was a combination of hotel 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 26 



J 



and variety theater. In it the guests could take their 
choice between eating their meals in bed-rooms, as 
cheerless as prison cells, or dining to the accompani- 
ment of squeaking fiddles and shrill-voiced young 
women, who held forth as song-and-dance artists on a 
stage at one end of the dining-room. 

Wondering the while which of these two evils is 
likely to be the worst, you turn your attention to the 
toilet arrangements in your room. There is neither 
soap, towel, nor water. Your spirits revive, however, 
at discovering something resembling a washstand in 
one corner, and in answer to a few rings of the bell a 
melancholy woman brings a pitcher of water which 
she pours into a tin receptacle above the stand. This 
receptacle you have made the acquaintance of in 
other Russian hotels, and have learned that if you 
press a treadle with your foot it squirts a jet of water 
that is understood by the natives, but which will very 
likely strike an unsophisticated foreigner in the face. 

Here, however, you discover that there is no treadle 
and no visible way of getting at the water. A careful 
search at length discloses a loose brass spigot, with the 
thick end inside, in the bottom of the vessel. If this 
spigot could be removed altogether, a stream of water 
would trickle out with which you could dally in com- 
fort. But a knob at the small end forbids this liberty, 
and requires you to hold the wretched stopper in with 
one hand in order that sufficient walcr to wet the 
other may escape. A more ingenuous arrangement 
to thwart the efforts of a person to wash the hands 
and face could scarcely have been invented. 

There was to be a boat for Nijni Novgorod at nine 



264 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

o'clock next morning. Kamaret in hand, I sallied 
forth in the glare and dust to see if there was any- 
thing worth photographing. Some Turcoman team- 
sters, with a string of camel carts, filed past, an Asiatic 
spectacle that I had not before seen, in European Rus- 
sia. Tzaritzin, however, is in easy touch with Asia by 
an all-water route down the Volga to Astrakhan and 
across the Caspian. 

A rude bench on the edge of the bluff on which the 
town is built attracted me by reason of the good view 
to be obtained from it of the Volga, and the multitude 
of busy workers among the rafts and shipping. 

About five o'clock there appeared on the southern 
horizon of the river a white speck that grew larger 
apace, and finally assumed the shape and dimensions of 
a magnificent steamboat, patterned after the floating 
palaces of the Mississippi. As it steamed majestically 
up to the landing, there could be no manner of doubt 
that the steamer owed its existence to American enter- 
prise, which must have either placed it on the Volga or 
furnished the pattern for those who did. 

My chief interest in it, however, was as to the time 
of its departure up stream, and I at once repaired to 
the office on the floating dock, to which it was shortly 
moored. By dint of insistence w^ith the ticket agent, 
who persisted in replying *' sei tchas," which means 
any length of time, from a minute to a year, I at 
length discovered that it would start in half an hour, 
and would take me to Nijni Novgorod. At the hotel 
I was advised by the proprietor to remain and witness 
the performances at the theatrical end of the dining- 
room in the evening, the character of the entertain- 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 265 

ment being indicated by the sawing of an imaginary 
violin. 

Not to be tempted, however, by the blandishments 
of resin and catgut, as manipulated by the talent of 
the Lower Volga, I hastened aboard the steamer. I 
got aboard in time to shut the window of my cabin 
against a hurricane of dust that sprang up and ob- 
scured everything at the distance of a hundred yards. 
As we paddled away nothing w^as to be seen of Tzar- 
itzin but the dust of its streets, which had been con- 
verted into a dense cloud, and which completely hid 
the city from our view. 

The cabins were spacious and left nothing to be 
desired, save sheets and a pillow. Since every traveler 
in Russia is supposed to carry these articles with him, 
the steamboat people consider they have made ample 
provision for the comfort of their first-class passengers 
by providing broad, soft lounges for them to lie down 
on at night. The steamboats carry no bed linen, 
though the trips occupy several days. In every other 
respect the cabins are superior even to those on the 
Fall River Line and other crack American steamers. 

The cuisine is very good. You can dine a la carte 
on sturgeon and champagne, or you can get a four- 
course table d'hote dinner with a half bottle of drink- 
able Crimean claret for a couple of rubles. Or, if you 
are economical, and care to do in Russia as plenty of 
the Russians do, you can forage for yourself whenever 
the steamer calls at a town, and obtain from the 
steamer nothing but hot water to make your tea. 

The arrangements are better than on the Don 
steamers, where at dinner-time every window of the 



266 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

saloon is apt to frame the unkempt head of one of the 
third-class passengers, who regards with wolfish in- 
terest the contents of your plate and speculates 
vaguely as to the probable sensation on the palate of 
the various dishes as they come in. 

Every Russian passenger carries tea and sugar, 
usually in a little calico bag. Bread and lemons are 
bought at the stopping places, and every steamer 
keeps a lubberly, unwilling sort of youth, whose duty 
is to provide plenty of hot water. Teapot and glasses 
are obtained from the steward, and the Russian family 
by means of these ingredients manage to pass no 
small share of their time drinking tea and sweetened 
water. The Russian would probably rebel against the 
insinuation of sweetened water, but the straw-colored 
fluid that is yielded by the overtaxed leaves after the 
teapot has been replenished over and over again with 
hot water is not to be converted into tea by a mere 
politeness of the tongue. 

Life on the boat was dull. The men played cards 
and the women read novels. There was a spacious 
promenade deck, but no promenaders to speak of, 
though the nights were moonlight and the weather all 
that could be desired. By walking round the deck a 
few times one made himself conspicuous. If, per- 
chance, one of the Russian travelers took to strutting 
up and down, it was some vain young peacock of an 
officer who had nothing to recommend him but a new 
uniform, or some giddy member of the opposite sex 
posing for the admiration of the men. Russians 
rarely walk* for exercise, they being in this respect 
thoroughly Oriental. 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 267 

In the third-class section of the boat life was some- 
what more interesting. Here the moujik in his red 
shirt and unkempt hair was in his element with an 
accordion and plenty of weak tea and melons. As on 
the railway, melons formed a prominent feature of all 
the landings, as well as of the traffic on the river. 
They went past by boat-loads, and at the stations they 
were built up in pyramids by the thousand, like can- 
non-balls in a fortress. In season the common people 
almost seem to live on bread and melons. 

The river life consisted of tugs towing monster rafts 
and strings of huge barges. The bigness of the rafts 
and the number of barges hooked on to one tiny tug 
seemed to curiously illustrate the Russian disposition 
to overreach and get the best of a bargain. You meet 
undersized tugs struggling along with no less than six 
barges, each one of which is several times larger than 
itself, and though you may be mistaken, you cannot 
help thinking that the owner of the barges has some- 
how defrauded the owner of the tug. 

All steamers burn refuse petroleum, which is brought 
from the Baku refineries on the Caspian and moored 
in tank hulks at various points along the river. It is 
stored in tanks over the fire-boxes, into which it is fed 
.by means of taps. As it leaves the taps, jets of steam 
convert it into fine spray and scatter it over the fire- 
box, where it is consumed by instantaneous combus- 
tion. The interior of the fire-box presents to the eye 
nothing but a mass of yellow flame. 

The scenery of the Volga is tame, but not devoid 
of beauty ; and in places, to one coming from a jour- 
ney over the monotonous steppes, seems really beau- 



268 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

tiful. It is not to be classed with the Rhine or the 
Hudson ; rather does it belong to the class of the 
Danube, the Mississippi, the Yangtsi-Kiang, and other 
principal rivers of the world. Though shallower than 
any of these, it compares favorably with them in size 
and length. 

In the internal economy of Russia it plays as im- 
portant a part as the Mississippi did in that of the 
United States before the development of the railroads. 
The railroad system of Russia is (1890) as yet in its 
infancy, and the great artery of commerce between the 
lumber regions of the North and the grain-producing 
steppes of the Southeast is the Volga. Years ago the 
huge barges used to be laboriously towed by teams of 
men, as are the big freight sampans on the Chinese 
rivers ; and the burlaki, as they were called, and their 
exhausting labors, have been the theme for the inspi- 
ration of Riepin's brush. Later they used to haul 
them upstream by means of anchors and capstans. 
These primitive methods were relegated to the past 
by the defeats of the Crimean War, which did Russia 
much more good than harm, by teaching her that na- 
tional greatness could only be achieved by progress in 
the arts and sciences. Now there are several lines of 
good steamboats, which leave little to be desired, un- 
less it be an increase in speed. The distance from 
Tzaritzin to Nijni Novgorod is but 1685 versts, yet the 
journey occupied six and a half days. 

At Samara, Simbirskh, and Kazan the passenger list 
assumed a more polyglot aspect from the addition of 
Tartars, many thousands of whom reside in the pro- 
vinces of the Middle Volga. They retain their Moham- 



UP THE DON AND VOLGA. 269 

medan religion, and the small minarets of their 
mosques in Kazan are visible from the deck of the 
steamer. In the evening" they retired to the stern of 
the boat, and kneeling toward Mecca, performed their 
devotions. The zigzag course of the liver befooled 
them sorely as to the direction of the holy city. Some- 
times they commenced their prayers by kneeling and 
bobbing their heads in the direction of Mecca and 
fended by addressing themselves, unwittingly, to a well- 
nigh opposite direction, from the steamer having 
passed, during their pious meditations, a bend in the 
river. 

These scenes were varied at times by a diversion of 
some kind ashore. One night all the people of a vil- 
lage congregated on the bank near a station. The 
moonlight, the broad river and the majestic steamer 
inspired the female part of the crowd to song. For 
some distance after we had left the vicinity we could 
hear this vocal tribute to a moonlight night on the 
Volga, sung by the wives and daughters of an entire 
village. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 

IN a previous chapter I said, among other things, 
that the journey up the Volga occupied six and a 
half days, which I condemned as an indication of Rus- 
sian indifference to the flight of time. 

On the Volga steamers the ticket is for passage 
only ; food is obtained and paid for as at the Russian 
hotels, where rooms are under one management and 
dining arrangements under another. Just before land- 
ing at Nijni Novgorod, when the obsequious young 
man in swallow-tail coat and semi-immaculate shirt- 
bosom, who had been so devoted and disinterested in 
his attention to ni}- wants, presented m}' bill for din- 
ners, etc., I made a fair)}' startling discovery. We had 
been, not six days and a half on the journey, but 
eight and a half ! In humble imitation of Rip Van 
Winkle I had, at some part of the voyage, laid down 
and slept for two days without suspecting it! 

It is surprising how rapidly and unconsciously the 
traveler becomes c}'nical and suspicious under the 
benign influence of the paternal rule of the Russian 
Tchin. Yet how could one suspect the young gentle- 
man in the swallow-tail coat ? For did he not instantly 
summon a brother swallow-tail to decide between us, 
whether we had been six da}'s or eight coming from 
Tzaritzin ? And how could the author, with an 

270 



AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 271 

extremely limited stock of Russian words at com- 
mand, hope to withstand the torrent of convincing 
consonants that rolled from the tongues, and acquired 
new force from the pantomime of these two practical 
knights of an honorable profession ? 

The contest was most unequal ; and then, when it 
occurred to me that these t\vo trusted servants of a 
steamboat company, who should naturally take pride 
in promoting the interests of their employers, would 
be most unlikely to attempt to reduce the record of 
speed one fourth, I succumbed. It is true that if I 
had slept for two days without eating anything, there 
still remained the inconsistency of charging for eight 
dinners when I had ordered only six. I was, however, 
so delighted at having gone through so remarkable a 
performance, that I not only paid the bill without fur- 
ther dispute, but gave the swallow-tails a ruble douceur 
apiece as a slight recompense for having at first sus- 
pected them of duplicity. Unfortunately I was never 
able to recall any extraordinary visions or dreams in 
connection with my forty-eight hours' sleep ; nor was 
I able to discover, by comparing it with an almanac, 
any two days' jump in my diar)'. 

Fast or slow, however, I felt grateful to the steamer 
for having landed me in Nijni Novgorod at the full 
tide of the gj'eat annual fair. This feature of Nijni 
Novgorod, to which the city is indebted for its world- 
renown, was in full swing. The hum and bustle of the 
fair were suggestive of a hive of very busy bees, in 
which the w^orkers, however, were not bees, but men 
and women, and the queen bee a woman with scales, 
like Justice, only not blind, and weighing, instead of 



2 72 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

equity, products of human industry from every quarter 
of the globe. 

There is an impression abroad that, owing to the 
development of the Russian railway system, the great 
fair of Nijni Novgorod is no longer what it was. This 
is true in one sense, but not in the sense that people 
commonly accept the information. To the astonish- 
ment of the Moscow merchants themselves, who fully, 
expected that the railways, by distributing merchan- 
dise to all parts of the country, would reduce the 
Nijni fair to an historical curiosity, merchants flock to 
the place from ei-er}" town in Russia and Siberia in 
numbers as great as ever. The volume of business 
was, in 1890, as large as it ever was. 

In Russia, as elsewhere, conservatism is apt to pre- 
dict all manner of evil consequences to established 
institutions by radical economic changes. The con- 
servative merchants of Moscow and St. Petersburg saw 
the collapse of the great institution of the Nijni fair 
in Russian railway extension. But these conservative 
merchants, in no way abashed by the discovery of 
their own false reasoning", continue to come to Nijni 
as of yore and to dispose of about the same quantity 
of goods. 

The lesson they learned from the experience is that 
improved transportation facilities, by cheapening goods 
and placing them within easier reach of the people, 
have simply brought about an increase in consurnption 
and demand. The merchant's pro rata profits have 
been reduced in favor of the consumers by the new 
order of things, but since he sells twice as many goods 
as formerly, the results to him are in the end the same 



At NIJNI NOVGOROD. 273 

or better than before. He now not only sells as many 
goods as ever at the Nijni Novgorod fair, but, by rea- 
son of the railways, ships an equal quantity off to a 
ever widening circle of new customers elsewhere. 

The old order of things, the smaller trade and the 
exorbitant profits, were of course more congenial to 
the conservative Moscow merchant, who, like any 
other fossil, dislikes to be stirred up by the uncere- 
monious pole of modern progress. But the consumers 
have benefited immensely, while the only result to 
him has been the necessity of waking up to a juster 
and livelier sense of commercial competition. 

In the shop of a Moscow merchant I met traders 
from widely remote parts of the Russian Empire. 
One from far Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia, informed me 
that it cost him three and a half rubles freight on 
every pood of goods from Nijni to Irkutsk. At the 
then rate of exchange, this is equivalent to $120 a ton, 
American weight. I asked him why he didn't obtain 
his goods by way of the Pacific and the Amoor River. 
He replied that the paternal Russian government had 
placed the lock of prohibitive customs duties on that 
door, and so compelled him and his brother merchants 
of those remote regions to come to European Russia 
to buy goods, and to pay the enormous addition to 
their cost in getting them home. 

My merchant friend, who had attended the Nijni 
Novgorod Fair for twenty years past, gave me some 
particulars of the trade. 

The fair opens officially on July 15, and ends on 
August 25. Merchants begin to arrive and do business, 
however, before July 15, and the fair drags along into 



2 74 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TANC. 

September. Altogether it may be said to last two 
months. At the opening ceremonies, flags are hoisted 
all over the city, and processions of priests with 
crosses and ikons pass through the streets. Squads of 
police arrive from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and 
from July i to September, the Governor of the 
province is invested with full powers, even of life and 
death, as in military government. 

For ten months in the year, the long rows of sub- 
stantial stone and brick shops, the cobbled streets, the 
numerous hotels and palatial restaurants of the modern 
fair-city of Nijni Novgorod are deserted, save by a 
few watchmen. During the seasons of high water, 
at the melting of the winter snows in the northern 
forests, the lower stories of the houses are often under 
water, and in order to get about the streets a visitor 
would require a boat. 

At the thawing of the Siberian rivers, in April and 
May, the movement of goods and merchants toward 
this rendezvous begins. Down the rivers, in barges 
and in steamers, wool, hides, tallow, pelts, and other 
bulky produce from Siberia gravitate toward this 
common center, and, during the fair, occupy the 
'' Siberisky priestin " in huge stacks, covered with 
canvas, or long sheds roofed with tin. As fair tin.e 
draws near, a similar movement of the goods for which 
this raw material is to be exchanged begins from the 
West. Goods are packed up and shipped to Nijni 
from every city in Europe, and, indirectly, through 
Russian and German houses, from America also. It 
would be difificult to mention an article that one could 
not buy in the streets offhand, and quite impossible to 



AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 275 

mention anything that could not be obtained through 
agents. 

The variety of goods is bewildering ; and I was in- 
formed that there is an exchange in the two months of 
about 300,000,000 rubles, or $175,000,000. IMost busi- 
ness is transacted on a year's credit. Goods arc sold 
to be paid for at the next fair. On the whole, bad 
debts are rare, and, while the system of long credit 
survives, the exorbitant profits that in the past history 
of the fair have justified the risk, no longer obtain, 
owing to increased competition. 

When the Russian, Persian, Bokhariot, Siberian, or 
other merchant who trades at Nijni pays his last year's 
obligations, he expects a present. If a wine merchant, 
after settling his bill, he looks over the wholesaler's 
stock, and selecting a bottle of high-priced champagne, 
jokingly walks off with it. If the transaction has been 
in saddlery, he appropriates a fancy bridle. While I was 
in my friend's magazine, a repository of hardware, a 
Samarkandian merchant who called to settle for a 
couple of American cotton gins, commenced to exam- 
ine critically a cross-cut saw. My friend, who had just 
been explaining this peculiarity of the trade of the 
Nijni fair, gave me the wink. Tlie Samarkandian 
stepped to the door, and summoning a }'outh, quietlx' 
made off with the saw, hardly giving the owner of it a 
smile as he went out. 

In many little ways customers have to be indulgently 
humored, to meet the peculiar ways and ideas of the 
East. The Asiatic customers have a habit of dropping 
in about zakuski time, when, of course they are politely 
invited to partake of the tempting spread of caviare, 



2^6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

cheese, sardines, etc., that is set out in the little rear 
room. 

Everything counts. Shrewd Moscow and St. Pe- 
tersburg merchants make a point of sending with the 
goods and staff of clerks to Nijni, one or two of their 
handsomest young women clerks, who are expected to 
" look their prettiest " and attract custom. There is 
said to be no sentiment in commerce. Perhaps not, 
in a world-wide sense. But one has only to attend the 
Nijni fair and watch one of these lady saleswomen from 
Moscow^selling a bill of goods to a rough, half-civilized 
merchant from Central Asia, to shatter his faith in the 
maxim. How can this rude denizen of a distant mud- 
built town, inhabited by unwashed men and bedraggled 
women, bargain on fair terms with this dainty young 
saleslady, gotten up for the express purpose of wheed- 
ling such as he into making purchases? 

Rent is higher in Nijni Novgorod than in any other 
city in the world. Persons \\\\o invest capital in build- 
ings to be rented must get a reasonable return on the 
outlay, whether it be in Nijni Novgorod or in New 
York. And since in the former city the shops, hotels, 
theaters, restaurants, etc., are unoccupied for ten 
months in the year, twelve months' rent has to be 
charged for the other two. In other words, the mer- 
chant who rents premises in Nijni for the two months 
of the fair has to pay as much rent as if he remained 
for a year. 

The utmost precautions are taken against fire. The 
electric light had about driven from the streets and 
shops the old system of petroleum lamps, and in 
another season or two will probably be the only illumi- 



AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 277 

nation permitted by the authorities. The regulations 
in regard to fire are amusingly rough on the cigarette 
smoker, whose habitat is, above all other places, Russia. 
A person caught smoking in the streets is arrested and 
ingloriously marched off to the police-station, where he 
is fined fifty rubles. At the hotels a couple of lynx- 
eyed lackeys in the employ of the proprietor are 
stationed at the entrance to warn the outgoing guests 
of this regulation, and to bar the way of the uninitiated, 
who would otherwise step jauntily into the street and 
into the arms of the nearest policeman. These dvorniks 
reap a rich harvest of tips from the guests of the hotels, 
who naturally feel under obligations to them from saving 
them fifty ruble fines. 

The wisdom of these precautions against fire come 
to be understood as the traveler walks about the city 
and realizes the enormous value of the merchandise 
that it contains. Every hole and corner is literally 
crammed with goods. The shops and warehouses are 
as prolific of goods as the streets, cafes, and hotels are 
of people, and both goods and people are of a poly- 
glot character not to be seen anywhere else in the 
world. 

To a person who has never traveled in Asia, a trip 
to Nijni Novgorod during the fair would more than 
repay the trouble. Merchants from distant parts of 
Asia bring their manners and customs with them to 
Nijni. The Persian may be seen in turban or tall 
lamb-skin hat squatting in his little bazaar, complacently 
stroking his beard and smoking his kalian, precisely as 
he is to be seen in Teheran or Ispahan. Young* Tar- 
tars are seen by the score strolling about the streets 



278 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA JVC. 

peddling bunches of Astrakhan lamb-skins so beauti- 
fully dressed as to tempt almost anybody to buy. 

There is a hide and peltry section, where Tartar fur- 
riers may be seen currying Siberian sables, bear-skins, 
and all manner of costly furs. There is a part devoted 
to the sale of nuts, the trade of which seems to be in 
the hands of the Persians, who can fill your order from 
stock in hand, whether it be for ten kopecks' worth 
of walnuts to crack and eat, or for twenty tons of a 
dozen varieties. 

There is a quarter occupied by temporary booths 
and stalls, where crowds of Russian peasants, the men 
in red shirts and the women in red dresses and red 
'kerchiefs, are purchasing or cheapening red calico, and 
all manner of red and other bright colored wearing 
apparel. 

And close by is the show quarter, where twenty rival 
showmen and an extremely loud-mouthed crowd of 
assistants are hooting, whistling, beating gongs, drums, 
tins, and extracting from all manner of wind instru- 
ments a very Bedlam of noises. Here may be wit- 
nessed to the best advantage, perhaps, the childlike 
innocence and gullibility of the moujik, his wife and 
daughters. These simple folk are to be seen in the 
densest throngs, gazing in mute wonder at the cheap 
paintings on the booth fronts of the showmen who 
succeed in kicking up the greatest and most unearthly 
racket. This is very likely their first experience of city 
and fair life, and the tremendous difference between 
the outside and inside of these places is as yet un- 
suspected. A curious feature of this place to the for- 
eigner is that.soldiers in uniform are employed by the 



AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 279 

showmen fo attract the crowd. As mentioned in a 
previous chapter, Russian soldiers are permitted to 
work twenty-five days a month. 

There is a Chinese quarter without any Chinamen in 
it, and nothing to justify the name beyond the fact 
that tea is sold there, and that a rude attempt at 
pagoda architecture has been made, with a few figures 
of exceedingly doubtful mandarins on the roofs. 

A few minutes' walk from these reminders of Asian 
and Russian interior life brings the visitor to the finest 
building, apart from cathedrals — of which there are 
two — in Nijni. On the way you have traversed a neat 
boulevard, shaded by an avenue of trees and lined with 
shops, whose windows are as attractive as any row in 
Paris, London, or New York. The building you have 
reached is a magnificent arcade, three stories high, the 
upper floors being occupied as government ofTices and 
banks, and the lower by dealers in fancy goods. Here 
are electric lights, tubs filled with tropical plants, and 
a military band in the evenings. Can it be possible, 
you think, that all this is only an affair of a few weeks, 
and that for ten months out of every twelve solitude 
and the high waters of the Oka and the Volga are in 
possession of this city? Still stranger does it seem 
that cathedrals and churches should be abandoned to 
the owls and the Evil One, and the Stock Exchange to 
the twittering of the birds. 

The curious incongruity of the Bpkhariot and the 
electric light, and the feverish activity all about, re- 
mind you, however, that the surroundings are alto- 
gether too extraordinary to last long. You are also 
reminded of this in your hotel. The dining-rooms of 



28o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

the restaurants are converted into cafes cJiantants. 
Young women from all the towns of Russia, in cos- 
tumes as abbreviated as the law allows, sing, or attempt 
to sing, to the diners at the restaurants and hotels, 
standing on raised platforms at one end of the room. 

Everywhere is a feverish pressure that, in the nature 
of things, cannot endure. It is commerce on a spree. 
The debauch lasts a couple of months, and when it is 
over, this extraordinary collection of goods and people 
disappears. 

Some of the merchants ship the remnant of their 
stock to Irbit, on the borders of Siberia, in the province 
of Perm, where there is a winter fair of which we hear 
nothing, but which is the second largest fair in the 
world. The Irbit fair lasts a month, from January 20 
to February 20, and though small compared withNijni, 
nevertheless shows a business of 40,000,000 rubles a 
year. Like the real city of Nijni Novgorod, which is 
perched on a bluff, overlooking the fair-city, which oc- 
cupies a peninsular at the junction of the Oka and 
Volga, Irbit amounts to nothing except during the 
brief life of the fair. 



^4 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

" HOLY RUSSIA." 

WITH the completion of the equestrian tour from 
Moscow to Sevastopol, and the return to Moscow 
by way of the Don and Volga to Nijni Novgorod, 
thence by rail to the starting point, the "grand tour " 
through the Czar's European dominions was ended. 
And as we return westward by rail, halting briefly at 
Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw, a brief record 
of impre-ssions, in addition to the observations recorded 
on the ride, will serve to round out and complete the 
object of our visit. 

A foreigner visiting Russia for the first time is 
always deeply impressed by the outward and visible 
signs of religion that confront him at every turn. 
Long before he reaches St. Petersburg the golden 
domes of its splendid churches and cathedrals, twink- 
ling brightly in the sunlight, have been visible from 
the deck of the steamer or from the windows of the 
train. He admires from afar these costly evidences of 
the religious character of a great nation, and they are 
among the first places he visits after his arrival. 

St. Isaac's and the Kazan Cathedral of St. Peters- 
burg, and St. Saviour's of Moscow, each in turn daz- 
zles and bewilders you by the splendor and wealth of 
gold altars, ikons all ablaze with diamonds and every 
variety of precious stones, priceless paintings, columns 

281 



282 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

of malachite, millions on millions lavished on marble 
and granite. 

The isvoshchic who drives you about the city is for- 
ever removing his hat and crossing himself as the 
drosky passes a church or a holy picture in a shrine. 
The throngs of people in the streets ; merchants, 
soldiers, sailors, peasants, clerks, truckmen, officers, 
gentlemen, ladies, boys, nurse-maids, the whole het- 
erogeneous population of a city, follow your coach- 
man's example. Passing in and out of the churches 
are never-ceasing streams of people going or coming 
on errands of devotion. Before the principal shrfnes 
on the street corners a throng is never absent. 

Hung up like a picture in one corner of your room 
at the hotel, not always in St. Petersburg, but always 
in the provinces, is a holy ikon, and if you are the 
guest of a Russian family, uncorrupted with European 
influence, a little ikon very likely will be fastened to 
the head of your bed. In short, you have arrived in 
Holy Russia ; Russia, the Orthodox ; Russia, the home, 
and the champion and defender of the *' only true 
Christian religion." 

As for you, whatever else you may be. Catholic, 
Protestant, Hebrew, Moslem, or nothing in particular, 
you are, in the eyes of these holy people, whose gov- 
ernment, after looking over its black list to make sure 
that you are not an active champion of liberty or 
enlightenment, has permitted you to cross the frontier, 
a heretic. Since nobody troubles to reproach you, 
however, nor to convert you from the errors of your 
own religion, you can easily assume the attitude of a 
jion-belligerent, and set about fathoming, without bias 



' ' II OL V A' US SI A . " 283 

or prejudice, the depth or shallowness of the sweeping 
claims of the Orthodox. 

That the Russians are strict observers of the out- 
ward forms of religion there is no room for dispute ; 
but are they really a religious people ? The first doubt 
probably finds its way into your mind through the 
medium of the extremely pious coachman, who has 
been driving you about to visit the gorgeous cathedrals. 
Though he has removed his perky isvoshchic's hat 
twenty times and made twenty crosses with every 
mark of reverence during the hour of his engagement, 
when you come to pay him off he will not unlikely 
assure you that you engaged him not one but two 
hours ago, and all but literally pick your pocket. The 
smile of roguish enjoyment that comes into his face is 
in no way abashed by the sign of the Cross which he 
immediately makes, and if he has swindled you to his 
heart's satisfaction he will very likely jog along to the 
nearest shrine and make several signs of the Cross. 

Though this happens at a very early stage of your 
investigations, a glimmer of light begins to break over 
your understanding, and awakens a suspicion that all 
this show of holiness springs less from fear of God than 
fear of evil spirits. This idea grows upon you in pro- 
portion to the length of your stay in the country, and 
increases with the growth of j^our acquaintance with 
the people. And if you stay long enough, and investi- 
gate the subject as thoroughly as may be, your first 
suspicion is very apt to be coniirmed. 

The educated Russians may be dismissed from the 
subject of religion suits ceren^mie.. As a class they 
represent the extreme sectioa of atheism, free thought. 



284 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

" advanced ideas," etc., of the age ; and of those who 
bare heads before churches and ikons, one half do it 
as a matter of policy and the others because it is less 
trouble to drift with the stream than to stand still in 
it, and altogether too much of a strain to think of 
swimming against it. 

Apart from this Voltairian fringe, the mass of the 
Russian people are passing through much the same 
moral and religious transformation that Western 
Europe passed through in the Middle Ages. Allowing 
for a difference in social conditions, the Empire of the 
Czar presents a similar picture of splendid religious 
edifices towering over the habitations of squalid 
poverty ; of large monasteries full of treasures of gold, 
silver, and jcAvels, rich abbots and fat monks, standing 
in the midst of the broadest and fairest portions of 
the land. The Russian moujik of to-day is about as 
full of superstitions and the dread of the Evil One as 
was the villein of the West in the fourteenth century, 
and his conceptions of religion are leavened, as those 
of the villein were, with the lingering remains of 
paganism. 

His creed is largely composed of superstitions and 
demonology. To him the holy ikon, that is never ab- 
sent from his humble abode, is a mysterious, living 
thing, representing the saint, after whom it is pat- 
terned, not only in form, but in spirit and power. 

St. Nicholas is the moujik's favorite saint, and a 
*' Nicholai ikon " is found in nearly every peasant's 
house in Russia. It consists of a small picture of the 
saint, a figure holding in one hand a church and in 
the other a sword, set in a deep box-like frame, and 



' ' HOL V A^ USS/A ." 285 

gaudily decorated with brass, silver, tinsel, or wax 
flowers. 

The peasants burn tapers before it, and place offer- 
ings of food, etc., before it, much as the Hindoo ryot 
of India does before his household idol. And the place 
that the ikon holds in the Russian rr^oujik's mind 
seemed to me to differ very little indeed from that of 
the idol in the ryot's. 

One day, in the province of Kurskh, while drinking 
kwass in a peasant's house, I asked the housewife why 
she kept a taper burning before the Nicholai ikon. 

She immediately made the sign of the Cross. The 
ikon had been very good to them that summer, she 
said ; the crops were good, and the eldest son, who had 
been away several years in the army, had returned and 
brought home thirty rubles. I asked her if the ikon 
was a living thing, capable of influencing the affairs of 
the family. She seemed almost frightened at the ques- 
tion, as some good old soul in America, who from in- 
fancy had lived and prayed in simple faith, would if sud- 
denly challenged to prove the existence of God. Again 
she rapidly made the sign of the Cross, but gave no an- 
swer. I asked her the question in another form. She 
shook hef head. 

" Such things are not for ignorant people like me to 
say," she replied. Determined to corner her if pos- 
sible, I then asked her how many rubles she had paid 
for it, and where she had bought it. But it was a 
family heirloom, inherited from her husband's people. 

Although Christianity has been the religion of Rus- 
sia for more than eight centuries, the customs and 
superstitions of old pagan times continue to exercise 



286 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

considerable influence on the every-day life and sur- 
roundings of the peasantry. With all their church 
ceremonies and outward observance of the official 
religion, and their self-denomination of " the Ortho- 
dox," the superstitious moujik is only a half-converted 
heathen. Sp much is this the case that it is sometimes 
difficult to define where paganism ends and Chris- 
tianity begins in his creed. 

For instance, not only does he regard the Christian 
ikons much as his ancestors of the old pagan days did 
their idols, but he enthrones them in precisely the 
same place in his house that they used to occupy. In 
the home of the pagan Slavs the household idols used 
to stand on a bench or shelf in what was and is still 
known, as the '' Upper Corner," the farther right-hand 
corner from the door, and facing the big stove which 
occupies the central part of the house and around 
which the rooms are built. Then, as now, this was 
the sacred corner of the house, and the holy ikons of 
the present day have merely dethroned the pagan 
images and occupy the same shelf in the same corner. 

This corner is also referred to cis the -' Great Corner," 
or the *' Beautiful Corner," and no member of the 
family thinks of crossing the threshold to enter the 
room without making toward it the sign of the Cross. 

Near this corner is set the family dinner-table, 
another custom that connects the present with the 
past, when the heathen Slavs used to transfer the idols 
from the shelves to the table during meal times. The 
moujik of to-day does not place the ikons on his dinner- 
table, but he believes the souls of his ancestors, and of 
any members of the family who have died, are hiding 



'' HOLY RUSSIA." 287 

behind the ikons, and bread or little saucers of food 
are often placed on the shelf where the holy pictures 
stand. Small loaves of holy bread, made of fine white 
flower, purchased from the monks in the monasteries, 
are favorite articles of food to keep on the ikon shelves. 
To make those loaves more acceptable to the departed, 
inscriptions are sometimes written on the smooth white 
crust with pen and ink by the monks or the village 
priest. 

In religious matters the more ignorant of the Russian 
peasants still waver, so to speak, between the devil 
and the deep sea. They are afraid to make themselves 
too familiar with the village priest lest they give mor- 
tal offense to the old pagan gods, which have now 
taken the form of various mischievous and malignant 
spirits ; and, on the other hand, to protect themselves 
from the evil designs of these they are eternally mak- 
ing the sign of the Cross, and spending their scant earn- 
ings on candles to burn before the shrines of protect- 
ing saints. 

Though centuries of time have naturally modified 
this fear, it would seem to be a matter of doubtful 
credit to the " only true Church" that its children and 
chief supporters, the very Orthodox, on whose patient 
shoulders it rests, still shy at its priests lest the agents 
of the Evil One be offended. In many instances the 
peasants have transferred, in a foggy way, the attributes 
and functions of their ancient gods to the saints of the 
Christian Church, or to reverse the transformation, 
have simply bestowed the names of the saints on their 
old pagan deities. In transferring their allegiance from 
the old faith to the new, they have not always escaped 



288 THROUGH RUSSIA LhV A MUSTAiVC. 

getting matters curiously muddled. Thus the Prophet 
Elias has succeeded to the office of Perun, the ancient 
god of thunder. St. Elias is now the Russian peas- 
ants' " clerk of the weather." He it is who gives or 
withholds the rain necessary to the growing of their 
crops. And when it thunders and lightens, it is St. 
Elias driving in his chariot across the heavens. 

A Russian peasant will not harm a pigeon, nor would 
he think of eating one, even if suffering from want of 
food. All through Russia, and particularly in the 
lower forest zone south of Moscow, the country is full 
of pigeons, that enjoy complete immunity from moles- 
tation. In the country they are as tame as the semi- 
domestic pigeons owned by breeders in American cities. 

The pigeon has always been a sacred bird in Russia. 
In the old pagan times it was consecrated to Perun, 
the god of thunder, just mentioned. When the mis- 
sionaries of the Cross invaded the country and prevailed 
against Perun and his associates, the lucky pigeon lost 
nothing of its sacred character by the new order of 
things. The converts, by some occult process of 
reasoning, came to associate it with their idea of the 
Third Person of the Trinity. The sacred character of 
the pigeon, like the office of " weather clerk," has been 
brought over from the old religion to the new and 
consecrated to the Third Person of the Trinity, which 
the majority of the peasants think to be St. Nicholas. 

Readers will remember stories that have occasionally 
reached us from Russia of atrocities committed by 
fanatical peasants in the villages of the interior. On 
one occasion the burning of a poor old woman startled 
the Western World and taxed the credulity of the 



''HOLY RUSSIA:' 289 

newspaper-reading public. Then a man or woman 
was buried alive ; and we heard of a woman severely 
mangled by a wolf while rescuing a child from attack, 
left to perish in an out-house because no moujik would 
admit her into his house. On this horseback ride, 
which put me for several weeks in contact with the 
peasantry, I managed to pick up more or less informa- 
tion concerning their peculiar superstitions. 

Although the peasants have certainly advanced a 
step or two in knowledge and understanding during 
the thirty years since their emancipation, the powers 
of darkness still hold well-nigh undisputed sway over 
the minds of a majority of the rural population of 
Russia. Ignorance links arms with superstition, and 
the two revel in the interior villages whenever the 
normal apathy of the moujik brain is disturbed by fear 
or suspicion. Though he is sitting on the threshold 
of the twentieth century, and the humblest tillers of 
the soil in lands not far from him learned years ago 
that the world they live in is a planet revolving around 
the sun, the moujik still thinks that it rests on the 
backs of three whales, or monster turtles, in the ocean. 

No limit exists to the absurdities that find expres- 
sion in the beliefs and superstitions of such a people. 
The women and girls, of course, are the most supersti- 
tious. Unreasoning faith makes them tenaciously 
loyal to their old pagan traditions. In Little Russia it 
was the rather uncomplimentary lot of myself and 
companion to come daily under the suspicion of being 
the Evil One, Antichrist, the '' Cattle Plague," or 
other malignant spirit in disguise. 

In many of the postayali dvors of Little Russia 



^90 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

a young peasant woman performs the functions of 
hostler. One of the small diversions of the day's ride 
would be to speculate on the form these manifesta- 
tions of fear would assume in the next girl hostler. 
There was nothing fantastic about our appearance ; 
we were simply strange horsemen in a country where 
strangers are rare, and were dressed differently from 
anybody they had ever seen. 

The consternation of the girl on opening the tall 
gate in response to our summons, and suddenly find- 
ing herself in the presence of a pair of the super- 
natural beings of the popular witchcraft, often caused 
us to laugh outright, and always provoked a smile. A 
wild sort of fear came into her eyes, and she would 
shrink behind the gate. The first impulse would be to 
make the sign of the Cross, but fearful lest we, being 
Antichrists, might take offense at this, she would 
wait until we had passed in, when, fancying herself 
unnoticed, the holy symbol would be furtively and 
rapidly made. 

This sort of girl would be rooted to the spot with 
fear. Other girls, of more robust intellects, occasion- 
ally took to their heels, scampering away into the 
house like wild creatures. During our stay these 
superstitious damsels would be in an exceedingly un- 
comfortable frame of mind. Fearful of coming near 
us, they were equally fearful lest their all too evident 
reluctance to serve us might give offense and cause 
us maliciously to "wither their souls," or bring them 
other evil fortune. As an occasional phenomenon, we 
would find a girl who would be neither afraid of us nor 
of submitting to the camera. 



''HOLY Russia:' 291 

The Russian peasants still believe in the agency of 
witchcraft and sorcery, and when visited by an epi- 
demic, such as the smallpox, cholera, or cattle plague, 
a stranger appearing in their midst alone is sure to be 
regarded with suspicion. And if the stranger happens 
to be a " tall, shaggy old man " or a ** withered old 
woman with flashing eyes," or otherwise resembles the 
creatures of the popular superstition who are associated 
with these malignant maladies, the fanatical peasants 
would not hesitate to bury the unfortunate wretch 
alive. 

On the base of a memorial to Czar Nicholas, in St. 
Petersburg, is portrayed a scene in which the Czar 
quells a tumult among the peasants by raising his arm 
in anger. It depicts an actual occurrence of his reign 
in the streets of St. Petersburg, at the time of the 
cholera, when the moujiks rose in tumult against the 
police because they refused to arrest persons who had 
been seen "carrying cholera powder into a house " for 
the purpose of spreading the disease. 

Certain curious rites are still faithfully practiced in 
many Russian villages to ward off the '' cattle plague," 
which the moujiks believe to wander about the coun- 
try in human form. Among the Malo Russians the 
cattle plague is an old woman who wears red boots, 
and can walk on the water. Hence an old hag-like 
woman who should turn up in a Russian village in red 
boots would, especially in time of an epidemic, be in 
danger of her life. Stories are current among the 
people of moujiks who unwittingly gave a night's 
lodging to this weird creature, and in the morning 
every member of the family was dead. 



i9^ THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

In some districts remedial measures are periodically 
taken against a visitation of the murrain. The cattle 
are all driven into the village, and a big circle is made 
around it with a plow, which is dragged by the 
oldest woman in the community. All the female 
villagers follow in procession behind the plow, carry- 
ing ikons, chanting weird incantations, and beating tin 
pans and cooking vessels. One old woman bestrides a 
broom a la witch, and a widow, wearing nothing but 
a horse-collar around her neck, keeps pace with the 
one who is dragging the plow. If a dog or a cat, 
frightened by the noise, rushes out, it is immediately 
seized and killed, on the supposition that it is the 
cattle plague in disguise, trying to escape. 

In other districts casting a black cock alive into a 
bonfire at the end of certain ceremonies is believed to 
be efficacious in warding off many contagious diseases. 
Bonfires are built in the village, and young women in 
night-dresses drag a plow and carry a holy picture, 
with muck unearthly screeching, after which the un- 
fortunate rooster is cast into the flames. In some 
villages, when a visit of the cattle plague is to be 
dreaded, if a stray cow happens to be found among the 
herd, it is burned alive, as the peasants believe that the 
'* cattle death " has thus assumed the form of a cow 
to escape detection. 

One of the most curious and widespread beliefs of 
the peasants is that every house contains a domovoi 
or house-spirit. Russian peasants catch glimpses of 
the domovoi about as often as Americans see ghosts, 
but they all believe in his existence. The domovoi is 
described as a little old man, no bigger than a five- 



" HOLY RUSSIA." 293 

year-old boy. Sometimes he is seen wearing a red 
shirt, with a blue girdle, like a moujik on holidays. 
At other times he sports a suit of blue. He has a 
white beard and yellow hair and glowing eyes. 

Though mostly invisible, the peasants firmly believe 
that he is always about the premises and busying himse-lf 
in their affairs. His usual hiding-place is understood 
to be behind the big brick stove that forms the chief 
feature of a Russian cottage. When the people are 
asleep he issues forth and conducts himself amicably or 
otherwise, according to the humor he happens to be 
in. The domovoi is mischievous as a monkey, and 
like that animal is inclined to fly into a passion at very 
short notice if he is not satisfied with his surroundings 
and treatment. Many peasant families after eating 
supper always leave a portion of food on the table for 
the domovoi, who would otherwise consider himself 
ill-treated and disturb their sleep by pounding on the 
table with his fist. 

In some of the peasants' stables are little glasses or 
saucers of oil, the use of which is a mystery to the 
uninitiated stranger. They are found in villages where 
the domovois are believed to be fond of horses and 
cattle and of visiting the stables at night. As the 
domovoi likes oil the saucers are put in the stables to 
keep him in good humor and to induce him to be kind 
to the horses and cattle. If angry, he has been known 
to take a horse out and ride it nearly to death ; the 
peasant finding it panting and covered with foam in 
the morning. 

Though troublesome if not well treated, the domovoi 
usually takes the kindliest interest in the affairs of the 



294 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

family with whom he has found shelter. He keeps 
count over the poultry to see that nothing is stolen, 
and many moujiks, when they kill a chicken for the 
table, hang its head up in the back yard that the domo- 
voi may understand what has become of it. When a 
death occurs in the family the domovoi is inconsolable 
for many days, and may be heard at times wailing be- 
hind the stove. 

In the province of Orel, through which my road lay, 
many of the peasants endeavor to have all their live- 
stock as nearly as possible of one color. This applies 
even to the poultry, the dog, and the cat. This is be- 
cause the domovoi of their house is believed to like that 
color best, and will be pleased at this deference to his 
taste. The manner of finding out what color the do- 
movoi likes best is one of the ceremonies of Easter 
Sunday. On that day the peasants hang up in the 
stable something perishable in a piece of rag. When 
maggots appear they judge from their color what is 
most likely to be the preference of the domovoi. 

If ill luck seems to attend the rearing of their do- 
mestic animals, it is believed that a strange domovoi 
of a malignant disposition has appeared in the house- 
hold. A shovel or other household implement is then 
dipped in tar. During the night the strange domovoi 
will rub himself against it, and, taking offense at the 
insult, will leave the premises. 

On certain nights of the year tlie kindest of domo- 
vois will become malicious, and special precautions 
have to be taken to appease them. In some districts 
little cakes, baked expressly for the domovoi, are placed 
near his retreat, on the stove, on the eve of the Epiph- 



'' HOLY RUSSIA." 295 

any. January 28 is another date on which the house- 
hold domovois of certain parts of Russia are believed 
to get into tantrums. When angry, they sometimes 
stop the breath of the sleeping members of the house- 
hold and produce nightmare. On January 28, there- 
fore, a pot of mush or stewed millet, to which he is 
very partial, is set on the table for the domovoi before 
the family retire. 

Wizards and witches still flourish in rural Russia in 
great numbers. They interfere in all manner of ways 
with the moujik's prosperity and peace of mind — 
almost as much so, in fact, as his other and more tangi- 
ble enemies, the priest and the policeman. 

When a milch cow dries up sooner than the peasant 
thinks she ought to, he has no doubt whatever that 
she is being milked by the witches. To keep the 
witches out of the cow-shed crosses are chalked or 
painted on the doors. If the witches brave the crosses, 
indicated by a lack of improvement in the milk-giving 
capacity of the cow, the moujik will try the experi- 
ment of a church candle, such as are burned before the 
shrines and ikons of the saints. 

As a matter of fact, the visitor sees these crosses every- 
where in rural Russia. A cross is erected on the frame- 
work of a house in process of building, and crosses are 
seen on the ceilings of inns, houses, sheds, stables — 
everywhere. The first impression of all naturally is that 
you have stumbled upon an extremely God-fearing, 
reverential set of people. This impression is intensified 
by the spectacle of the people themselves making the 
sign of the Cross at well-nigh every turn, and at every 
act performed. 



296 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

There is reverence in all this symbolism of the Holy 
Cross. But you awaken to a clearer conception of the 
religious ideas of the peasantry of Russia when you 
finally come to understand that the cross is painted on 
the stable door to keep out witches, and that the crosses 
on the ceiling are to prevent these same malicious 
sprites from entering the house. 

Amulets are still worn, attached to pieces of thread, 
about the neck by many moujiks, in addition to the 
little pectoral cross. The old spell used by the peas- 
ant's pagan ancestors is very likely tied to -the same 
neck-thread as the cross. Both are to preserve him 
from sickness and disaster. As between the two he 
has more faith in the cross nowadays, but he still clings, 
with the stubborn conservatism of ignorance, to the 
symbols of ancient heathen faith, nor does it ever oc- 
cur to him that to tie a bat's-wing amulet obtained 
from the village sorcerer to the little cross obtained 
from the priest, and hang them both about his neck is 
an insult to his religion. When he bathes in the river 
he makes the sign of the Cross to keep the water-witches 
from strangling him. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 

ON the streets of every city, every town, and in every 
village, from one end of Russia to another, the 
foreign traveler passes men whose habit is sufficiently 
distinct from others to attract attention. The habit in 
question consists of a long cloth gown that reaches to 
the ankles, a soft felt billycock hat, and heavy top 
boots. The gown usually is black, but is sometimes 
blue, and is girdled snugly about the waist. Whether 
you meet one of these odd figures on the most fashion- 
able street in St. Petersburg, or in a remote village of 
a distant province, the dress, figure, and deportment 
are identically the same. 

These gentlemen are the popes, or 'Svhite clergy " of 
Holy Russia. The long gown and severely simple at- 
tire are supposed to be in imitation of the Saviour 
when on earth, and the likeness is increased by wear- 
ing long hair. 

From the standpoint of an outsider the Russian 
pope cuts a comical, not to say contemptible, figure on 
the world's stage. Viewing him from a plane beyond 
his sphere of influence you feel like laughing him off 
the boards, but install yourself among the people who 
are forced to have dealings with him and he changes 
from a comical to a serious character, whose deserts 
would be hootings and carrots rather than merriment. 

297 



298 THR UGH K USSIA ON A M US TANG. 

But because the pope is born into his position and in- 
herits his characteristics from many generations of 
sires and grandsires, every one of whom was as incon- 
gruous and out of place in the garb of Christ as he, it 
behooves us not to be too uncharitable in cur judg- 
ment. 

The Russian priest occupies a unique and unenvi- 
able position in the society or his own country as well 
as among the spiritual representatives of the earth. 
The Romish priest and the Protestant pastor, who take 
the initiative in works of charity and keep a sharp eye 
on the morals of their parishioners, would find in the 
heart and the deeds of the Russian pope no chord of 
sympathy. The pope rarely preaches sermons and he 
takes no part in charitable works nor bothers himself 
about the moral welfare of the people. His interest 
* in the benefice to which he has been assigned on ordi- 
nation, probably begins and ends with the amount of 
money he is able to squeeze out of his parishioners. 
As he neither pretends, nor is expected to make any 
pretense, to a life of morality, his methods of adding 
to his income are often strangely at variance with our 
ideas of what pertains to the office and functions of a 
priest. 

In some districts the popes receive small salaries 
from the government and in others grants of land, off 
which, with the addition of baptismal, marriage, burial, 
and other fees, they are required to make their living. 
Short of stealing and robbery with violence, the more 
unscrupulous of the clergy resort to any method of 
extortion and money-getting. Their most notorious 
methods are to act in their parishes as agents for the 



ORTHODOX CIIUKCII AND J'A'/ESTS. 299 

sale of certain brands of vodka, and by their own ex- 
ample and all manner of insinuating measures promote 
its consumption among the peasants. 

The Imperial Government looks with indulgent eye 
on the drunkenness of its subjects, and resents tem- 
perance agitation with almost as much jealousy as 
political, the reason being that the greater part of its 
revenue comes from the tax on liquor. The priests, 
who in other countries are ever foremost in checking 
the growth of intemperance, in Russia promote it by 
every means short of pouring vodka down the people's 
throats. With a view to commissions on its sale, the 
popes excuse its consumption by the too willing 
moujik on the most specious pretenses. They will 
even quote Scripture to them to prove that there is 
no harm in getting drunk, their favorite quotation be- 
ing: "■ Not that which goeth into the mouth of a man 
defileth him ; but that which cometh out." 

The size of the pope's income depends as much on 
the ignorance, superstition, and credulity of his parish- 
ioners, coupled with his own shrewdness, as on the size 
and population of the parish. His legitimate fees 
among the peasantry are three rubles for officiating at 
a funeral, one ruble at christenings, and one ruble for a 
private morning mass. At weddings he receives any- 
thing up to ten rubles, and at betrothals a bottle of 
red wine. In addition to these, however, he manages 
in one way or another to lay the moujiks under contri- 
bution to the extent of cultivating his land. 

A pope deems it no disgrace to get drunk, nor does 
he, by loose living, lose caste in the estimation of his 
parishioners, so long as his looseness affects nobody's 



300 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

pocket but his own. In fact, in Russia as elsewhere, 
and among popes no less than among other people, 
the man of convivial habits is apt to be at the bottom 
a generous soul. 

As a class the popes are cordially despised by the 
Russian people. The peasantry regards them not as spir- 
itual fathers, but as corrupt agents of the Church, just 
as the police and the hordes of officials who prey upon 
them are corrupt agents of the government. One set 
are disreputable tools of the Church, the others of the 
Czar. Both Church and Czar they reverence, but they 
expect nothing but extortion and corrupt practices 
from the minions of either. Among the peasants the 
worst-hated minions of the civil government are our 
friends of a previous chapter, the uriadniks, a horde of 
nearly 6000 rural police, who, in 1878, were let loose 
among them with almost unbridled powers of petty 
persecution. The uriadnik has become a byword 
among the people, and on a par with him, in the esti- 
mation of the moujiks, is what is known among them as 
the "" merchant pope." 

For a drunken, dissolute clergyman, the moujiks 
have no special aversion, because in their eyes drunk- 
enness, even in a priest, is no sin, and as before stated 
they trouble themselves little about what does not af- 
fect their own pockets. It is because the practices of 
the " merchant pope " do affect their pockets that they 
hold him in special abhorrence above others of the 
cloth. 

The " merchant pope " is a priest who is forever 
scheming to extort money from his parishioners. His 
ways of reaching their pockets are multifarious, and his 




.1: J.^ .... 1 iil/ 



ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 301 

ingenuity is exercised in preying on the credulity, the 
fanaticism, and the superstition of the wooden-headed 
moujik. The '' merchant pope" not only acts as agent 
for the sale of vodka, for the greater consumption of 
which he multiplies the holidays and merry-makings in 
his district, but he also concerns himself in the sale of 
ikons, and by granting bogus certificates of communion. 

Every Orthodox Russian is required by law to pro- 
vide himself with a certificate, showing that he has par- 
taken of the holy communion within the year. To 
backslide from the church is a penal offense, for which 
thousands of Russians have been transported to Siberia, 
and a subject of the Czar known to have been born in 
the Orthodox faith, found by the police without a 
eucharistical certificate from his priest, would find him- 
self in trouble. Under the surface, dissent is rife ; and 
it is in districts where dissatisfaction with the senseless 
rituals of the established Church abounds that the com- 
mercial pope flourishes and grows rich the fastest. 
For the heretics who come to him, rubles in hand, he 
makes out bogus certificates of communion, and those 
who think to escape notice he ferrets out and levies 
upon. 

The commercial pope bargains and chaffers over the 
fees for baptisms, weddings, and burials, and every re- 
ligious service required of him by his people is a finan- 
cial speculation. For rubles he will ofificially condone 
all offenses, and grant absolution for all manner of evil- 
doing. Without pay he will neither pray for rain to 
revive the moujiks' withering crops nor burn candles 
before the ikon of St. Nicholas, the moujiks' favorite 
saint. Much as they despise him, the moujiks believe 



302 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

him to be the medium through which the blessings or 
the curses of the Church and the saints affect them 
and their interests, and of this behef the commercial 
pope takes every advantage to transfer from their lean 
pockets to his own their hard-earned kopecks. Per- 
haps it was studying, at close range, the ungodly trans- 
actions of the commercial pope that brought Count 
Tolstoi to the conclusion that the primary duty of 
every minister of the gospel is to earn his own living as 
a husbandman. 

To the foreigner who has been accustomed to regard 
the wearers of the cloth with something akin to the 
same reverence that he feels for the Church, the Rus- 
sian pope, and the place he occupies in the minds of 
the people, is something of an enigma. In the Russian 
mind the pope seems to have no connection with the 
Church beyond a financial interest in its forms and 
ceremonies. The government has appointed him 
ofificial purveyor of baptismal forms, marriage rites, 
holy water, and masses, for which he receives fees, and 
by means of which he makes capital out of the super- 
stition and ignorance of the peasantry. 

The Church they reverence ; but the pope who 
stands between it and the people and acts the middle- 
man in dispensing or withholding its blessings, is the 
butt of the national satire and figures largely in popu- 
larsongs and stories as a charlatan and a despicable 
fellow generally. The Rcissian who has committed 
some grievous sin, and is prepared to go to any ruinous 
length in regaining the favor of the saint, approaches 
the pope on the subject of special masses for the pur- 
pose in much the same spirit as he would approach a 



ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 303 

rascally dealer in spavined and broken-winded horses. 
He broaches the subject cautiously and in a round- 
about manner, lest by appearing too eager he betray to 
the pope the fact that his services are urgently re- 
quired ; a piece of indiscretion which he knows only 
too well would result in an immediate inflation of that 
gentleman's fees. 

On his part, the pope, by means of long practice and 
an hereditary insight into the workings of the Russian 
conscience, has acquired such an expertness in detect- 
ing the very things that these would-be cheapeners of 
the holy functions try to conceal that he invariably 
gets the better of the bargain. It is this prostitution 
of the holy office to a bargaining and haggling over ru- 
bles and kopecks that is the secret of the pope's unen- 
viable position. All business in Russia is transacted on 
a low moral basis. Every Russian merchant cheats and 
overreaches, as a matter of course, nor do customers 
expect anything better of them. The moujik feels no 
resentment against the man who tries to overreach 
him in a bargain for a red shirt ; because if he fails in 
his bargaining with one merchant he goes to another. 
But with the dealer in masses and sacraments he is 
deprived of this freedom by the government, which 
has practically given the pope of his parish a monop- 
oly. If the mass merchant refuses to chant and burn 
candles for him, save at extortionate rates, which he 
very often does, the extortionate rates have to be 
paid. 

Russians will tell you that cases are common in the 
villages of popes refusing to bury the dead and ad- 
minister the sacrament to the dying until the prices 



304 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTAXC. 

they demanded were forthcoming. Thus it has come 
to be a common saying among the people that " the 
pope takes money both from the living and the dead. 

From what the author saw and experienced among 
the Russians, however, I am far from taking a one- 
sided view of the matter between popes and peo- 
ple. Take the popes as they are, without any pre- 
tense to a higher degree of commercial morality than 
their parishioners, and it is a fair battle of wits between 
them. If the popes overreach the people in charging 
for their services, there are, on the other hand, few 
communicants among their flock who would not, if 
they could, bamboozle the pope into praying for him 
and administering the sacrament to them for nothing. 
There are no people in the world so intent on getting 
something from some one else for nothing as the aver- 
age subjects of the Czar. 

In addition to being despised by the people, the two 
orders of clergy in Russia — the black clergy or monks 
and the w^hite clergy or popes — hate and despise 
one another. The popes hate the monks because it is 
from their ranks that all the higher dignitaries of the 
Church are chosen, and because the monastic orders 
attract nearly all the death-bed bequests of the 
wealthy, which they think might otherwise come their 
own way. This abhorrence is repaid with interest by 
the monks, who affect to despise the popes as being 
the " small rogues of the Church," and responsible for 
the scant esteem in which both orders are held by the 
people. 

One day, during the ride from Moscow to the Crimea, 
we met a pope on the road. A party of moujik tramps 



ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 3^5 

who were ahead of us met him first, and, after they 
had passed him, they, without any visible motive, 
wlieeled round and walked straight across to the oppo- 
site side of the road. In explanation of this my com- 
panion informed me that it is considered bad luck to 
meet a pope on the road, and, by crossing his trail at 
right angles, thereby forming a cross behind him, the 
moujiks hoped to avert any calamity that would other- 
wise overtake them as a consequence of having met 
him. 

Many of the popes are men of fair education, but 
others are woefully ignorant, particularly of the Scrip- 
tures. Sascha told me of a village pope who knew 
only one passage of Scripture, and this he used to re- 
peat over and over again as a regular order of service. 
The congregation used to respond with the same. The 
passage was, '' And Christ went down to Jerusalem. * 

One day the pope was thrown into consternation by 
hearing that a nobleman who owned an estate in the 
district was coming from St. Petersburg and would 
attend mass next Sunday. It would never do to be- 
tray to the nobleman the fact that he knew but one 
passage of Scripture. He consulted a brother pope in 
the adjoining parish. This gentleman didn't know any 
Scripture at all, but advised him, as the easiest plan, to 
substitute Bethlehem for Jerusalem for the occasion of 
the nobleman's visit. 

This was an easy thing for a man of education like 
the pope, but, when it came to the responses, the 
thick-headed moujiks forgot their pastor's instructions 
about Bethlehem and bawled out the word they had, 
from long usage, grown accustomed to. The pope was 



3o6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG, 

furious. Forgetting the presence of the nobleman, he 
shouted out : 

'' You wooden-heads ! it isn't Jerusalem to-day. I 
told you it was to be Bethlehem ! " 

Priests of this class are known to the Russians as 
" one-mass popes." 

The Orthodox Greek Church of the Holy Russian 
Empire is the most gigantic monopoly that exists on 
the face of the earth at the present day. It owns the 
exclusive right to regulate the morals, direct the con- 
sciences, and warp the souls of 100,000,000 human 
beings. It has a patent, supported by the mighty 
power of the Russian government, granting to it the 
exclusive right and title to the religious exploitation 
of a fourteenth part of the population of the earth, 
and the power to punish severely the least infringe- 
ment of its rights. 

Monopoly may not always be a curse in commerce. 
Its defenders have sometimes even been able to make 
out, owing to peculiar and exceptional conditions, 
cases where it may have been a blessing in disguise. 
But there can be no manner of doubt as to the influ- 
ence and the results of the monopoly in religion. 

The blight of intolerance has smitten the priests 
with moral leprosy, that has left them without any 
resemblance to the same class in other countries. 
Russia is the only country in Christendom where the 
servants of the Church and the wearers of the cassock 
and gown neither exercise, nor attempt to exercise, a 
good moral influence on their parishioners. Excep- 
tions there are of course, but they are exceedingly rare. 

The Russian Church is at one with the government 



ORTHODOX CHURCH AAW PRIESTS. 30? 

in that it regards the people merely as a means for its 
own support and aggrandizement. The two are gigan- 
tic Siamese twins, who wax fat and continue to grow 
in power at the expense of the toiling millions of 
peasantry, who live harder and enjoy less comfort than 
any set of people whom the writer, who has been in 
twenty-four countries, can call to mind, unless it be a 
certain class of coolies in China. One loots them by 
means of the tax-gatherer and the police, the other by 
means of the priests, and by trading on their igno- 
rance, which it encourages, and their superstitions, 
which it is too lazy and indifferent to root out. And 
while one forbids the victim to move even out of his 
house into another without permission, or to escape 
through any channel whatever, the other has the mon- 
strous power to imprison or send to Siberia any one 
who presumes to assist him out of the slough of igno- 
rance and superstition that keeps him helpless. 

To convert a Russian peasant from the Greek 
Church to any other branch of the Christian religion 
is a penal offense, punishable by a long term of hard 
labor in Siberia. If he is already a sectarian, the peas- 
ant may remain so, subject to various humiliating 
restrictions. What the Russian Greek Church de- 
mands of the people is that they " keep quiet " and 
do nothing. " Work and pay for masses and sacra- 
ments ; give money to enrich churches, and buy can- 
dles to burn before the ikons of the saints ; but don't 
think ; don't read ; and, above all, make no move 
toward worshiping God according to the dictates of 
your own conscience, or you will be punished and 
imprisoned." 



3o8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Secured in its monopolistic power and position by the 
strong arm of the Government, the policy of the 
Church has become that of the dog in the manger. 
Its intolerance of propaganda is only equaled by its 
lethargy. It will neither bestir itself to the better- 
ment of the people who have been given into its power 
nor permit others to do so. Like any other monopoly 
that has no fear of competition, it refuses to trouble 
itself about the quality of the goods it supplies, con- 
cerning itself solely with the question of warning off 
infringers of its prerogative. 

In Southern Russia, however, notwithstanding the 
severe penalties enacted against apostacy, a very large 
proportion of the people are, either openly or covertly, 
dissenters. If born outside the province of the Ortho- 
dox Church, all well and good ; there is no need of 
concealment ; but if a convert from Orthodoxy, peace 
and security from imprisonment is usually secured by 
bribing the priest to make out false certificates of 
communion, which are, so to speak, '' religious pass- 
ports." This the apostate has to get renewed every 
year, as every peasant does his civil passport from the 
police. Selling false eucharistical certificates to back- 
sliders from the established Church is said to double 
the income of many parish priests in Southern Russia. 

All dissenting sects are known as heretics. The 
more numerous are the Stundists and the Molokani, 
or milk-eaters, so called because they drink milk on 
fast days. In riding across the steppes of Malo Russia 
and the Crimea, I used to stumble upon the villages of 
these dissenters, as well as of German colonists. A 
most curious thing to me was that you could tell a 



ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 309 

German or a sectarian colony as far as you could see it, 
on account of the vast difference between its surround- 
ings and those of an Orthodox moujik village. 

Only a few miles across the steppe, on the same soil 
and with no advantages or favors from nature, you 
reach a village that seems to belong to another country 
or to an age centuries ahead of the one you have just 
left. The houses are built with some pretext to 
architectural beauty ; they are painted white and 
roofed with red tiles. The windows, which in the 
Orthodox villages were broken, stuffed with rags, or 
covered with dirt, are as clean as in an American 
house. Each house stands in a flower-garden, neatly 
fenced, and avenues of trees are along the streets. 
Here, too, if it is harvest time, you will find the peas- 
ants owning a threshing-machine and other modern ap- 
pliances for saving time and labor. Hitherto, though 
you have ridden on horseback all the way from Mos- 
cow, you have seen nothing but flails and rude stone 
rollers for threshing, and the grain has been winnowed 
by tossing it in the air on windy days. 

The secret of this tremendous transformation is that 
you have reached the colonies of the sectarians, who 
have pulled their necks out of the yoke of the monopo- 
listic church. When I first reached one of these clean 
and prosperous villages, after several weeks' experience 
among the Orthodox, my eyes were gladdened as at 
the sight of an oasis in the desert. 

I was alone, a stranger and a foreigner, unable to 
speak the language beyond making known my wants. 
My companion and interpreter had returned to Mos- 
cow. As I expected, I was received with suspicion. 



3IO THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

For all they knew I might be a secret agent of the 
government coming among them for sinister reasons 
as spy. These sectarians dread an agent of the govern- 
ment more than the Evil One himself. 

I showed them my American passport, which puz- 
zled them and seemed only to add to their suspicions. 
At length, however, I was taken in. The house was 
as scrupulously clean as a house in Holland. Shining 
brass candlesticks stood in the broad window-sills 
and flower-pots full of plants gladdened the eyes and 
added to the cheerfulness of this model interior of a 
cottage. Everything that could be polished was bright ; 
everything of linen, as white as soap and elbow-grease 
would make it. 

For supper I had white bread, fried eggs, cold milk, 
and the only eatable butter I had seen since leaving 
Moscow. In the province of Ekaterinoslav there is a 
maxim applied to a careful housewife : " She is good, 
like a Molokani wife." At nightT slept between clean, 
sweet sheets, a luxury that I had given up all hopes of 
ever enjoying in a Russian village. Though they treated 
me in this highly acceptable manner, the residents, 
however, never ceased to regard me with suspicion. 
They positively declined to talk about themselves, 
though it is fair to presume that I might have had 
better success in drawing them out had I been equal 
to a less disjointed way of asking questions. They 
were Russians, in no way different from their slovenly, 
ignorant Orthodox brethren, except in the difference 
that had been brought about by their emancipation 
from the slavery of a mediaeval church. The contrast 
between the two was so striking and so sharply defined 



ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 31 1 

that the only night I spent in a sectarian village is 
among the most vivid impressions of the ride across 
Russia. 

Every traveler in Russia has noticed this same dif- 
ference between the sectarian communities and those 
of the Orthodox peasantry. It admits of only one ex- 
planation. The Orthodox moujiks of Russia are at the 
present day, in spite of the vaunted emancipation of 
the serfs, the veriest slaves that were ever chained to 
the earth. No negro in the United States was ever 
owned and exploited as is the average Orthodox peas- 
ant of Russiain 1890. He is owned jointly by a pair of 
hard taskmasters, of which one exploits his body and 
the other his soul. Of personal, political, or religious 
liberty, he is about as destitute as he was when he 
was a serf. If now and then one peasant of excep- 
tional brains and energy manages to better his condi- 
tion, thousands are materially worse off than they ever 
were before. The moujik has simply changed masters. 
The rod has been taken from the nobles and placed in 
the hands of the tax collector. And the latter, having 
no personal interest in him beyond exacting Caesar's 
tribute, often spares him less than his former master 
did. 

His spiritual master, the Orthodox Church, instead 
of sending him a benevolent, religious gentleman for a 
pastor, spiritual teacher, and guide, who would teach 
him temperance and morality, and cheer and encourage 
him in the hour of adversity, saddles him with a knav- 
ish servile, who encourages him to drink vodka, and 
bargains like a horse-dealer with him over the price of 
baptizing his children. 



312 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Ten chances to one, if he ever had a copy of the 
Scriptures in his hand in his life. And if he could read, 
and was found by his pastor with a copy in his posses- 
sion, that precious gentleman would very likely cause 
him to be thrown into prison as a heretic and a dan- 
gerous person ; or, still more probable, would demand 
a bribe for omitting to do so. 

If by some extraordinary freak of human nature the 
pastor should happen to take interest enough in his 
work to preach an occasional sermon, before he may 
deliver himself of a word of what he would say he has 
got to write out his sermon and submit it to the blagotch- 
inny, a sort of ecclesiastical spy and censor. It is un- 
necessary to add that this worthy takes very good care 
that no light shall penetrate the darkness of the mou- 
jik's understanding by the channel that he controls. 



CHAPTER XX. 

RUSSIAN WOMEN. 

"\1 THAT do you think of the Russian ladies? ' was 
VV a question often asked me upon my return to 
New York. Rather a delicate question, and one not 
to be answered beyond recording a few observations 
picked up on the journey and information gleaned from 
residents of the country. One of my recollections is, 
that within a stone's toss of the balcony of my room 
in the Hotel Europe, Sevastopol, a score of Crimean 
and visiting nymphs were paddling and splashing 
about merrily in the blue waters of the bay, in full 
view of half the city. A plank fence, jutting fifty feet 
out into the water, separated them from three times 
the number of male bathers. Beyond the fence Rus- 
sian propriety was observed, if the sexes mingled not 
too promiscuously in swimming and paddling about. 
Some wore bathing-dresses and others did not, accord- 
ing to individual preference. A boatload of soldiers 
passed along in front of the ladies' bath-house and 
every head in the boat was turned inquisitively in that 
direction. 

One of the peculiarities of Russian women is that 
they appear to have no objection to this sort of scru- 
tiny. One day my horse refused to cross a stream at 
a certain point. A little farther along were a group of 
women, bathing. Seeing my difficulty, one of the 
women stood on the bank and motioned to me that 

313 



3 1 4 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

there was a better crossing close to them. The water 
proved to be shallow enough, in all conscience, where 
they were, and Texas crossed without further objec- 
tion. As for the fair bathers, they contented them- 
selves with dipping down in the water until I had 
passed through. 

This, however, is only preliminary. It is as a study 
of character rather than form that I would endeavor 
to present to my readers a few brief impressions of the 
Russian woman. 

An English governess whom I met in Moscow, who 
had spent twenty years in Russia as tutor in the fami- 
lies of the nobility, told me that Russian ladies of rank 
and wealth are nearly all '* spoiled children." Their 
virtues are warm-heartedness and financial generosity, 
though she unwittingly qualified the latter by adding 
that they knew nothing of the value of money. 

Russian ladies are clever and talented, but are afflicted 
with both mental and physical laziness. In a young 
ladies' conservatory there will be a very large percent- 
age of promising pupils, but very rarely indeed does 
one of them get beyond that rather vague point. One 
of the teachers of the Moscow Conservatory, speaking 
to my informant on this subject, said that out of fifty 
bright, promising pupils who came within his especial 
sphere of observation, not one turned out a success. 
The trouble is, lack of will power to persevere to the 
end — a poverty of application. They learn to speak 
a language readily, but not to write it, th« reason being 
that the former requires next to no mental effort in a 
person of ready perception, while the latter demands 
close application and attention to study. 



RUSSIAN WOMEN. 315 

Music, the languages, and dancing are the accona- 
plishments of the Russian lady. The former is a use- 
ful accomplishment to her ; but the number of Russians, 
both male and female, who have learned languages and 
forgotten them is surprising. They have learned super- 
ficially, and in a year or two forget, for the lack of 
some one to talk to. One meets many ladies, however, 
to whom the English and French tongues are as famil- 
iar as the Russian. This is not, as is generally supposed 
in America, because Russians learn languages more 
easily than other people, but simply because the chil- 
dren of every well-to-do Russian family of any preten- 
sion to nobility have English and French governesses. 

Their vices are laziness, untruthfulness, extravagance, 
cigarette smoking, and deceiving their husbands. The 
Russian lady is a poor housekeeper and she rarely 
nurses her own children. A hatred of mental exertion 
in the matter of detail and carefulness is a fundamen- 
tal trait of her character, and the keeping of accounts 
in the matter of household expenses is a species of in- 
tellectual slavery with which Mme. Ivanovka will have 
nothing to do if she can avoid it. If household eco- 
nomics thrust themselves upon her shoulders, whether 
she will or not, she gets rid of them in a slovenly, shift- 
less manner, and consoles herself with Zola and 
cigarettes. , 

I was assured, however, that Russian ladies of the 
upper class are far less addicted to the habit of smok- 
ing than they have been in the past. Among society 
dames it is becoming " the thing" not to smoke at all, 
save in the privacy of their own apartments. The 
habit is largely the outcome of the Oriental ideas that 



3l6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

belong to old Russia. A state in which the women of 
the household are excluded from the society of the 
opposite sex, and are required to live the life of the 
harem, is favorable to the development of such habits 
as cigarette smoking and indulgence in opium, as in 
Turkey and Persia. 

Oriental ideas in regard to the fair sex still prevail 
among the Russian mercantile class, and the merchants* 
wives and daughters are the most inveterate consumers 
of cigarettes. But the nobility and the educated sec- 
tion of society have wholly emerged from the Eastern 
conception of female seclusion, and many women of 
this class would nowadays be ashamed to smoke in a 
railway carriage or public garden. A woman who 
chooses to smoke in public, however, is by no means 
regarded as unladylike. Rather is she in danger of 
being looked upon by her more ''advanced " country- 
woman as behind the times — a sort of country cousin, 
who is regarded with much the same scorn as if she 
wore unfashionable clothes. 

The foreigner going to Russia would, moreover, 
never suspect that cigarette smoking is on the wane. 
Whether on train or on steamboat he is not unlikely to 
be approached by more than one woman, cigarette in 
hand, begging a light. And when he returns to his 
own country, among the reminiscences of his travels 
will be visions of both old women and young, fair and 
otherwise, who have engraved their images on his 
memory by reason of the great number of cigarettes 
they consumed in his presence. I have seen women on 
the train lay a box of ten cigarettes in their lap and 
make a " chain smoke " of the lot. Some women carry 



RUSSIAN WOMEN. 3^7 

tobacco and paper and roll their own '' papyros," but 
mostly they buy the ready-made Russian cigarettes 
with the paper mouthpieces. 

The great want of the Russian lady seems to be 
something congenial to occupy her time. She finds 
no pleasure in needlework, nor in walking abroad, lawn 
tennis, or any active pursuit whatever. She is not per- 
mitted by the paternal government under which she 
happens to have been born to take any active interest 
J!i politics or to promote societies for the advocacy of 
women's rights. Clubs and societies of any kind are 
looked upon with suspicion, and it is only by special 
permission of the authorities that she may even form 
a society in her native town for the distribution of rye 
bread and cabbage soup in winter to the poor, or a S. 
P. C. A. 

Novels and cigarettes and sunflower seeds are well- 
nigh all the legitimate occupations that come within 
her reach ; especially at her country residence, away 
from theaters and balls. She feels within her an in- 
spiration to a wider sphere of usefulness than reading, 
smoking, and nibbling, — but what can she do ? She 
would teach the poor children of the neighborhood, 
but the government won't allow it. She has an idea 
that the ritual and ceremony of the Orthodox Church 
is the merest mummery, and would seek information 
in other directions ; but the government won't grant 
that privilege either. 

She eventually finds diversion in the attentions of a 
lover. By a curious coincidence, my information on 
this score seemed to be verified by an incident that 
came under my notice before I had been a week in 



3 1 8 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A MUST A N G. 

Russia. About three o'clock one morning, in the 
hotel where I was staying at St. Petersburg, I heard 
a loud report. It awakened me, but thinking it was 
the slamming of a door I paid no further heed. In 
the morning, however, it turned out to have been a 
revolver shot, fired three doors from me by a Russian 
countess, who attempted to commit suicide during a 
quarrel with a young officer. 

A Swedish teacher of languages, whose acquaintance 
I made in St. Petersburg, confirmed the above in- 
formation from his own personal knowledge. This 
was a gentleman on whose word I place full reliance. 
He had been tutor in many noble families in and 
about St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kharkoff in Little 
Russia. His experience and observation were that, 
for the want of something better to occupy their 
minds, Russian ladies, with very few exceptions, 
amused themselves with intrigue. 

With all this, I was asked not to judge the Russian 
ladies too harshly, or by the same standard that one 
would apply to the women of other countries. Their 
conduct is not immoral. This would be too harsh a 
term altogether. The Russian ladies simply have such 
large hearts that it takes more than one man to fill one 
of them. 

The maternal instinct is a conspicuous trait of the 
Russian female character. Women of all classes like 
large families ; the larger the better. In the villages 
nearly every woman has a baby in arms. I came 
upon a fine example of maternal instinct in the person 
of Sascha's prospective mother-in-law, with whom we 
took dinner at her country house near Tula. Thi^ 



HUSSIAiV WO MEAT. 319 

good lady had fifteen children of her own. Yet she 
had adopted two orphans ; and, at the time I made 
her acquaintance, was watching over, with motherly- 
solicitude, a parrot that had had one eye knocked out, 
and a daw with a broken wing ! 

Ladies of quality rarely nurse their own children. 
The nurse, with her charge, is always a conspicuous 
figure on the streets of a Russian city. The fantastic 
garb and coronet of beads constitute one of the most 
picturesque costumes in Russia; and you can tell by 
its color whether her charge is a boy or a girl. If a 
boy, the prevailing color will be blue ; if a girl, pink. 

Vanity is not one of the Russian lady's cardinal sins. 
Though bad complexions are the rule, as a result of 
the climate, bad ventilation, irregular living, and want 
of exercise, no well-bred lady paints. Small feet and 
hands are common, and if the Russian lady takes pride 
in any particular part of her person it would be the 
smallness and shapeliness of these extremities. 

Though the Russian does not, like the Sultan of 
Morocco, fatten his wife by forced feeding, as poul- 
terers gorge turkeys for Christmas, his idea of 
womanly beauty is still somewhat Oriental. He pre- 
fers a fat wife, with a pink and white skin, and is very 
apt to break the second clause of the Tenth Command- 
ments if his neighbor's wife comes nearer this ideal 
than his own. 

Among the merchants and peasant class many old- 
fashioned, conservative Muscovite notions in regard to 
women still prevail. The Russian merchant thinks it 
no disgrace to knock his wife down with a blow of his 
huge fist, and the moujik beats his better half with a 



3 2 o THR UGH R VSSlA ON A MUST A NG. 

stick whenever he thinks she needs correction. The 
wife has no remedy in law against physical chastise- 
ment at the hands of her husband, nor thinks of 
resorting to the protection of the authorities. Her 
opportunity occurs whenever her lord and master 
comes home helplessly intoxicated. While he is thus 
powerless to defend himself, she seizes a stick and 
repays with interest every blow she has received from 
him since his last drinking bout. 

One day Sascha, who belonged to the merchant class, 
and expected after a term of soldiering to follow the 
life and traditions of that caste, surprised me by a re- 
mark in respect to women. He was a young man 
who knew absolutely nothing about horses, and con- 
sequently was always giving me, who did know some- 
thing about them, advice as to the management and 
care of Texas. On the occasion referred to my horse 
was a trifle fractious. 

"You must beat him," said Sascha. "A horse is 
like a woman ; if you don't give him a good beating 
now and then he will be capricious and want to do as 
he pleases, and not as you wish. With women it is 
the same." 

*' Do you intend to beat 3^our wnfe when you get 
one, if she is willful in her behavior? " I asked. 

''Beat her? Of course," he returned. " I should be 
thought a fool if my wife acted counter to my wishes 
and didn't get a beating for it." 

Among the middle and lower orders of Russian 
society the model wife is she whose good conduct and 
slavish obedience to the will or whims of her husband 
give him no excuse to lift hand or rod against her, and 



RUSSIAN women: 321 

who never beats her husband when he is drunk. Wives 
beating their husbands is, however, a recognized phase 
of Russian social life. Among the cheap chromos that 
adorn the walls of village tea-houses and traktirs one 
of the most familiar scenes is a drunken moujik on the 
ground and his wife beating him in no gingerly manner. 

The merchant's wife and daughters still keep out of 
sight, in accordance with Oriental custom, when male 
friends call on the husband ; and when they go shop- 
ping the husband and father goes with them, assists 
them with their bargains, and pays the bills. The 
merchant's wife paints her cheeks and is fond of 
bright-colored clothes. You often see them arrayed 
from head to foot in garish red. She spends the 
greater part of her time in drinking tea, smoking ciga- 
rettes, and gossiping with visiting friends. There is a 
saying that " a merchant's wife can drink a whole 
samovar of tea." 

Her mental abilities are held in light esteem by her 
spouse and his friends, who, though keen merchants, 
are, for the most part, men of scant education. Their 
ideas of women find expression in many contemptuous 
axioms and sayings that have come down from father 
to son. The Russian merchant or peasant will tell you 
that *' a woman has long hair, but a short mind ;" that 
she is a child of the devil; and that when you fall in 
love with her, you fall in love with the Evil One. It 
is considered bad luck to meet a woman when you are 
going fishing or shooting ; and plenty of Russians will 
turn back and start afresh, confident that ill luck will 
wait upon their rod or gun if they happen to meet a 
woman upon the road. In the churches *' neither 



32 2 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TANC. 

women nor dogs " are permitted to penetrate into the 
inner sanctuary, though men and boys are freely ad 
mitted. 

Marriages among this class are always marriages of 
convenience. They are usually arranged by the parents 
or an old woman go-between, known as the svaha, the 
contracting parties having little or nothing to say in 
the choice of their partners. The business of the svaha 
is to keep herself informed regarding the rising genera- 
tion about her, and bring about marriages between 
suitable persons. Her reward is a commission on 
dowries, or liberal presents. She kifows the worldly 
prospects and the personal worth of every youth in 
the town, and the amount of dowry that each young 
lady of her acquaintance is likely to receive. 

Having ascertained, by frequent business-like talks 
with the parents, that the prospects and personal 
recommendations of two young people are mutually 
satisfactory, she arranges a simultaneous attendance at 
church or theater, where the proposed bride and bride- 
groom may get a sly peep at each other. If they are 
satisfied with their choice, preliminaries are at once 
entered upon, a formal betrothal takes place, and, soon 
after, the wedding. 

Gypsy fortune-tellers are often resorted to for the 
purpose of finding out what sort of a husband the 
daughter will obtain. Russian gypsies like Russian 
horse dealers, Russian merchants and Russian officials, 
are a good deal more tricky than the same classes 
in most other countries. Well aware of the credulity 
of the merchants' wives and daughters, they some- 
times enter into partnership with a scheming svaha 



RUSSIAN WOMEN. 32^ 

and a penniless young man to obtain possession of the 
hand and dowry of a wealthy young woman. The 
scheme is an ingenious one and, leaving out the ques- 
tion of dishonesty, ought to succeed and does. 

It would be an inexcusable act of injustice to the 
Russian woman to dismiss her without pointing out 
that whenever the true test of womanhood is imposed 
upon her, she proves herself as great a heroine as any 
in the world. 

In her hours of ease she may be " uncertain," even 
'* coy and hard to please," but when her husband is 
overtaken by tht exile's garb and starts on the dreary 
road to Siberia, perchance to a living death, lovers 
and all else are forsaken, and she is herself again — a 
woman. 



CHAPTER XXT. 

A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. 

FINALLY, if any one were to ask me what trait of 
character is most conspicuously developed in the 
Russians, based on observations during my ride 
through the country, I would answer — suspicion. On 
reflection I might perhaps hesitate a moment between 
suspicion and superstition, and bestow a passing 
thought on servility ; but whichever of these three 
graces prevails, the Russians are, to my mind, the most 
suspicious people under the sun. 

From this sweeping assertion I don't except even 
the Chinese. My acquaintance with John Chinaman, 
though not of long duration, was nevertheless exceed- 
ingly close while it lasted. I need only refer to my 
" Around the World on a Bicycle." One who has rid- 
den a bicycle, alone, seven hundred miles through the 
highways and byways of a dimly known section of 
China, where a large part of a dense population had 
never set eyes on a ''foreign devil," let alone a bicycle, 
before, is entitled to a hearing on the question of sus- 
picion, if on no other subject. 

The ride through Russia, though on a flesh and 
blood horse, instead of a steel one, was, so far as op- 
portunities for observation among the people are con- 
cerned, substantially a similar performance. Coupling 
these equal chances of seeing to advantage, with an 

324 



A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. Z^S 

unprejudiced judgment between them, I have no hesi- 
tation in yielding the palm, with a considerable margin 
in their favor, to the subjects of His Imperial Majesty, 
the Czar. 

Patriotic Russians will tell you that in the person 
of the Czar are embodied all the virtues of all the 
Russias. Alexander III undoubtedly possesses most 
of the negative virtues and some of the positive ones, 
and in his benevolent countenance you look in vain 
for the cynical suspicion supposed by many to be the 
inherent expression of autocratic sovereigns. The 
Czar possesses his full share of the passivity of the 
Muscovite character, which leads men to shift their 
burdens and responsibilities to others ; and so, per- 
haps, he has honored his faithful Chief of Police, by 
handing over to him his own lawful share of the 
national trait in question. 

In the natural order of things, from an American 
point of view, the Czar should be the most suspicious 
person in Russia. That honor, however, undoubtedly 
belongs to His Imperial Majesty's deputy just men- 
tioned. He is the Czar's watchdog. And just as a 
householder may dismiss all worry from his mind after 
giving his watchful bull-dog the run of his premises, 
so, within the measure of human fallibility, does the 
Czar resign his care. 

Suspicion is, so to speak, the stock in trade of a 
police officer in any country, and when he figures as a 
cog in the wheels of a thorough-going autocracy his 
business is fairly to bristle with it. The usefulness of 
the Czar's Chief of Police depends on the amount of 
suspicion that is concentrated in his person and his 



326 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

alertness in putting it to active use. So efficient is 
Gen. Gresser in this particular that about 15,000 per- 
sons are sent away from St. Petersburg every year; 
and under his drastic administration the tourist who 
goes and peeps at Russia through Peter's window sees 
a city that creates a pleasant and favorable impression 
on his mind, and streets through which the Czar may 
drive without a guard. 

From the chief of the Russian police to the humble 
moujik of a squalid hamlet on the steppes is a long 
jump, but suspicion seems as inherent in one as it is 
the necessary qualification of the other. And through 
every gradation of Russian society, official and unoffi- 
cial, this baneful quality of the mind, thrusting 
itself on the writer's notice, weigh heavily in the 
balance against the better side of the national char- 
acter. 

Russia is a land of surprising contradiction, in char- 
acter as in institutions. The autocrat is obeyed by a 
multitude of tiny republics (mirs), and in the average 
Russian you find a truly paradoxical character in which 
a warm, impulsive frankness links arms with an ever- 
present suspicion. 

The figure that looms most prominently in my mind, 
apart from the fountain-head of the whole fabric at St. 
Petersburg, is, strange to say, perhaps, my equestrian 
companion, Sascha. He, in fact, carries off the honors 
and distinction of first attracting my attention to this 
very pronounced element in the character of his coun- 
trymen. Thrown in daily contact with him for several 
weeks, I came to understand him thoroughly, and 
through him got an ''inside glimpse" of many things 



A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. 327 

that would have escaped the observation of a foreigner 
traveling alone through the country. 

Sascha was warm-hearted and impulsive as a child. 
Full of faults and contradictions, it was yet quite im- 
possible to entertain harsh feelings toward him. From 
first to last he never ceased to regard me with suspi- 
cion whenever anything happened contrary to his pre- 
conceived ideas. In one of the villages between Count 
Tolstoi's estate and Orel he lost his passport. Ten 
hours later, after I had bribed a troublesome uriadnik 
to let him proceed without it to the next provincial 
government, he confessed in a burst of confidence that 
he had believed I destroyed his passport in order to get 
rid of him. All day he had nursed this suspicion, 
quite unsuspected by the victim of it at his side, who, 
at the end of that time, unwittingly cleared himself 
through bribing a policeman. 

In this odd manner was discovered the traces of 
"color" that led up to the discovery of a veritable 
mine of the precious commodity that forms the subject 
of this chapter. 

Like my horse, Texas, who had such a deep-rooted 
repugnance to wetting his feet that it required as much 
persuasion to get him into the last stream of the Crimea 
as the first one from Moscow, so Sascha persisted in 
the display of this Russian peculiarity to the end of our 
comradeship. Between the affair of the passport and my 
parting company with him at Kanseropol, there were per- 
haps a dozen trifling instances of ordinary and extraordi- 
nary affairs on the road,whereI came under his suspicion. 
On no single occasion was there the faintest shadow 
of reason in it. This he was always quick to see and 



328 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 

ready to admit in tones of self-reproach after the cloud 
had rolled by ; yet when, at parting, I wished him to 
sign a receipt for money that I gave him to pay his way 
back home, his ridiculous suspicions immediately came 
again to the surface. 

Though he understood that I only wanted some- 
thing to prove to his people in Moscow that I had 
treated him fairly and liberally, in case anything should 
befall him, Sascha objected. And the reason he gave 
was singularly Russian. 

** It is quite right," he said, " that you should have 
such a receipt." 

" Then why do you hesitate about giving it ?" 

"■ You will promise not to be offended if I tell you ? " 

" Certainly." 

** Well, then, with such a paper you could make me 
pay the money back again in Moscow ! " 

When arranging for the trip in Moscow, Sascha's 
elder brother, a city merchant, had asked me to give him 
fifteen rubles a month spending money beyond ex- 
penses. I had been so well pleased with his intelligence 
and readiness to talk about Russian affairs as we rode 
along that I had given him fully three times the amount, 
besides which I had gained from him both admiration 
and respect. Yet the strange mistrust of his fellow- 
men, that seems to be latent in the heart of every 
Russian, obscured in a moment all our pleasant relation- 
ship and transformed me into a most uncomplimentary 
character. 

This I pointed out, and Sascha, blushing with honest 
contrition, gave me the receipt without a moment's 
further hesitation. I was always rallying him about 



A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. 3^9 

this side of his nature, but it was not to be dislodged 
either by ridicule or discomfiture. In an American, 
an Englishman, a German, this pertinacious suspicion 
would have called for resentment, but with the Russian 
it is plain as daylight that he is no more responsible 
for his suspicions than a crow is for being black. 

And speaking of crows, since there are supposed to 
be white crows, it is fair to presume that there may also 
be such phenomena as unsuspicious Russians, though 
I should say one would be as rare a bird as the other. 

Though I never lost patience with my companion on 
account of his absurd suspicions, there was a certain 
malicious delight in seeing him come daily under the 
suspicion of others. He never grew weary of relating 
to his countrymen that his companion had ridden 
around the world on a bicycle, and, though he never 
succeeded in getting one of them to believe it, he re- 
turned to the unequal combat on an average of three 
times a day. '' £ato na mozhet biiet " (Such a thing 
cannot be) was the answer he nearly always got, and 
any further attempt to explain away his auditor's sus- 
picions only tended to increase them. His sole reward 
would be their admiration of what they considered his 
extraordinary abilities as a disciple of Munchausen, 
artistic lying being regarded in Russia as a valuable 
accomplishment. 

Among the peasants, the suspicions of the people 
with whom we had dealings assumed many curious 
forms. In a general way we were always under the 
ban of suspicion ; primarily because we were strangers, 
and secondly, because we were strangers of an uncom- 
mon sort. 



3 so THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

The recognized tendency of the densely ignorant to 
regard with suspicion anything they cannot understand, 
operated against us in every village we entered. Curi- 
osity might greet us with a fair measure of hospitality 
to begin with, but suspicion was very sure to be close 
in its wake and would eventually come to the fore. 

By the men we were suspected of being secret agents 
of the government, visiting them in the artful guise of 
passing travelers. By the women, whose dread of the 
Evil One was more palpable than their dread of govern- 
ment spies, we were suspected of being Antichrists, 
v/izards, or " Cow Deaths." 

One poor old soul is distinctly remembered among 
many others because of her innocent confidences. 
She didn't know what we might be, she confessed ; as 
for her, she was very old and had nothing more to live 
for, so could very well be indifferent as to what might 
happen as a result of our visit. 

She remembered, however, that two strangers, ''very 
much like us," had ridden through the village during 
the war with the Turks ; that three boys who had fol- 
lowed them down the road to call them names were 
never seen again. We took this as a powerful hint to 
deal gently with her grandchildren who were playing 
about near by, should we be meditating a supernatural 
visitation of any kind on the inhabitants of the place. 

Another form of suspicion was equally amusing, 
though very annoying. 

Whether we obtained accommodation over night 
with a rustic inn-keeper or a moujik, it seemed to be a 
most natural suspicion in the mind of our host that if 
not watched very closely we might clear out and leave 



A NATIONAL CHARACTERISnC. 331 

him to whistle for his money. As a general thing, our 
entertainer would content himself with keeping a sharp 
eye on our movements from the earliest streak of 
dawn, and with presenting himself before us at the 
slightest movement toward saddling our horses. But 
others would reassure themselves with a sly peep at us 
once or twice during the night. So universal was this 
form of suspicion that the few rare exceptions shine 
out very prominently in my recollections of the journey. 

The same trait is to be observed to advantage in 
Russian hotels. The waiters and chambermaids, in- 
stead of acting after the manner of the same class in 
England, who manage with considerable tact to " hap- 
pen along " at your departure, in Russia commence 
hanging about for tips, like a pack of hungry dogs at 
feeding time, an hour before the traveler thinks of 
leaving. The explanation of the difference is that the 
lower orders of society in England have confidence in 
human nature, whereas the Russians are as distrustful 
as monkeys. 

In addition to the suspicion of being '' beats," we 
were frequently suspected of attempting to pass coun- 
terfeit money. Whether such paper is common in 
Russia the writer had no means of learning, but we 
were, all along, in the villages, suspected of having it 
in our possession and of attempting to pay our bills 
with it. 

** What makes these people so long in bringing the 
change ? " was a query I put to Sascha, after the first 
few experiences in patient waiting. 

" They are afraid the note is a counterfeit," he re- 
plied, " and are taking it to various people in the 



332 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

village for their opinion before bringing us the 
change." 

"Well, the change is only thirty kopecks, we will 
not wait any longer; the cool of the morning will be 
frittered away." 

" That must not be either," returned my companion, 
" or they will conclude at once that the bill is a bad 
one. 

A curious phase of this particular suspicion was that 
the length of time we were kept waiting was in pro- 
portion to the denomination of the suspected bill. If 
it were only a two-ruble note, our suspicious host 
evidently would content himself with submitting it to 
the verdict of two or three other capable financiers, 
and would keep us waiting only ten or fifteen minutes. 
If a five-ruble note, however, he would take extraordi- 
nary precautions, probably getting the opinion of half 
the experts in the village, resulting in most exasperating 
delay for his guests. 

Of the suspicions of the provincial police it is suffi- 
cient to say here that they assumed every conceivable 
form that the Russian mind could invent in connection 
with the appearance of a couple of strangers traveling 
in an extrordinary manner. 

In Malo Russia the suspicions of the people multi- 
plied, owing to a more polyglot population. In the 
North the villagers were all Orthodox Russians ; in 
the South there is a mixed population of Russians, 
German colonists, Jews, Malo Russians, Cossacks, 
etc. There the Orthodox would suspect me of 
being a Molokani, or Stundist propagandist, with 
whom it would be dangerous to associate, and the 



A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. 333 

sectarians suspected me of being an ecclesiastical 
spy. 

The Jews were more suspicious than any of the 
others, particularly as the government was then vent- 
ing on them one of its periodical fits of persecution. 

The women of the better orders of society are by no 
means free from this unlovely trait. One morning, 
after an all-night ride in a train, I roused up from fitful 
snatches of sleep, indulged in sitting up, and bade a 
nice old lady on the other side of the car, whom I had 
conversed with the evening before, good-morning. 

** Some one has stolen my watch in the night," she 
replied, holding up ruefully the chain that dangled from 
her bosom. Seeing that the snap was broken, I sug- 
gested that it was only lost under the seats. She 
shook her head, but acted on my suggestion, and im- 
mediately found the watch. 

She and a young woman had slept on the same seats, 
which can be pulled out and used as a mattress, and 
missing her watch in the morning, she had, without a 
moment's reflection, suspected the young woman of 
robbing her. The idea that it might only be lost 
seemed not to have entered her head. 

One cannot help laying the blame for this abnormal 
development of one of the most unlovely traits of 
human character to the pernicious influence of the sys- 
tem of government under which they live. 

Suspicion and mutual distrust are the legitimate leg- 
acy that an autocratic government, which has to be sus- 
picious in order to exist, transmits to the people. In 
short, it seemed to me simply a case of *' like govern- 
ment, like people." 



"mi-H 



334 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 

Indeed, it occurs to me, as I reach the end of this 
record of a journey of investigation, that most of the 
blemishes that deform the Russian character, — the sus- 
picion of which the last few pages treat ; the corruption 
of the clergy ; the intellectual degradation of the peas- 
ants ; the dishonesty of the mercantile element; the 
poverty of the masses ; the drunkenness and improvi- 
dence, are mainly chargeable to the monstrous thing 
we call the Russian government. The people have 
naturally many admirable traits, which, if they were 
allowed to develop and expand, would enable them to 
put to shame many of their lofty and self-sufficient 
critics. They are charmingly simple, and free from the 
caddish affectation of superiority that disfigures the 
society of Western Europe, and in which America is 
not the least of the offenders. The Russian is by 
nature a *' good fellow "; and it is agreeable to believe 
that by and by, when he is allowed to read newspapers, 
educate himself properly, and develop politically and 
religiously — in short, to be a man, and take charge of 
himself, instead of a child in the crib of a paternal gov- 
ernment, — he will in time develop the sturdy virtues of 
manhood's estate, and take the place he ought to 
occupy in the brotherhood of civilized men. 



THE EISTD. 



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